Costume Quest

So appropriate for the time, or perhaps it isn’t fall when you read this, Costume Quest sees the adventure of brother (or sister depending on who you select) trying to save their sibling from an evil witch bent on taking all of the Halloween candy for herself. She has an army of minions go to the houses and steal the candy from the occupants. As the main character, you must fight your way through 3 levels, collecting candy along the way to the epic climax where the fate of all of the children’s candy hangs in the balance.

Okay so is it any good? Well first we must examine the fact that it is a downloadable bit of gaming and not a full retail release. With that in mind, it is almost enough to look past the very short 3 levels that you get for your money. (Remember Castle Crashers?) Almost. The fact of the matter is the value of online only game snippets, is going up, so whereas I would say that 3 levels isn’t nearly worth your 15 bucks, I guess times have just changed around me. So you can’t be too surprised when you sit to play this after downloading it and find yourself finishing it that same afternoon. A shame.

Perhaps with the short length, they included some replay ability? Ah, nope. Absolutely no reason whatsoever to replay this game. Well let me clarify that. There is the ability to collect every collectable item in the game during your first play through provided you are trying to do so. Not everyone is of the mindset to be watching out for such collectables but if you are, then as I mentioned, there is no need to replay this game. So if you are keeping score, we have here a short game that is only a one player affair with zero replay ability. I don’t really know what else to say about that.

Surely there must be some redemptive qualities to this game. And there is. It is extremely well written. There is a level of comic writing and wit in the dialogue that I haven’t seen in a full box game much less a downloadable one in a long time. It is refreshing to see them work hard on making a funny game that has some good moments of laugh out loudness. Of course I have to play the part of evil game reviewer and mention that the dialogue takes place entirely in text bubbles above the characters’ heads. Sure you can write that off as part of the comic booky ascetic that they are going for but at the same time, the witty retorts and self awareness would have been much better if it had come from a well rounded voice actor. Preferably British. Stephen Fry perhaps. At any rate, once again you have to point to the fact that it is a 15 dollar game offered digitally, so they didn’t have much of a budget in the first play.

Another point worth noting, whether this is good or bad is up to the end user, the game is very simple to master. When I say simple, I mean the learning curve is basically a straight line. There is a very tiny RPG implementation to the characters but it is very small. There is experience and you level up. You have two stats: Health points and Attack power. When you get into a battle, you have two or three options depending on your item you equipped. (some offer an additional option for your turn such as stunning an opponent). So you have your basic attack which is always available, and then you have a special attack that takes 3 turns to charge up. And that’s it. Very simple. Anyone could get the hang of this assuming they wanted to. So once again, whether that’s good or bad I will let you decide. For what it’s worth, I happened to enjoy the simplistic gameplay, then again I didn’t pay for my copy.

Now I don’t want to sound all doom and gloom about this game. It is not without it’s charm. There is a reason to buy it right there. What it comes down to is what the game is worth to you. I don’t think it’s worth 15 bucks. I would buy it for 5. The costumes have little abilities. The items you buy and equip to your characters are a nice little touch. And probably the best part are the battle sequences. They get tedious, at least I thought so, but they are still nifty. You get this little transformation where your character goes from a cardboard box robot to a full transformer style robot. The battles themselves take place over the entire level because everything is blown up to over the top scale. In fact you could say the entire battle sequence in general is over the top including the great ending battle. So just keep that in mind before you judge for yourself okay?

Released October 20th, 2010