Halloween has long since come and passed, but due to the combination/deluge of school, other video games, and my burgeoning alcoholism (as I write with a drink currently resting in my hand), I’m a little behind on a number of games, including the now seasonally-inappropriate Costume Quest, which came out just prior to All Hallows’ Eve. The game thankfully suffers no issue from my ill-timing, however, as Costume Quest is a fun, cute and colourful RPG which demands little from the player while still managing to be eminently enjoyable.
In Costume Quest you play as either Wren or Reynold, two bickering siblings who have just moved into a new town, and on the eve of Halloween are preparing to go out trick-or-treating. Soon into the night’s festivities, however, one of the siblings - the one you weren’t playing as, obviously - is kidnapped by a group of evil candy-thieving monsters, and it’s left to the remaining sibling to go and rescue them. Largely by getting together a rag-tag group of costumed children to kick some monster ass.
Yes, that is the Statue of Liberty fighting monsters, and yes, that is pretty awesome
Now, this game’s made by Double Fine, the people who made last year’s Brutal Legend (as well as Psychonauts, one of my favourite games of all time), and the developer’s stamp is easily visible from the get-go, both in it’s colourful, pastel environments as well as in the game’s smart wit. There’s a lot of funny dialogue throughout Costume Quest, that somehow manages to toe the line between kid-friendly and yet sharply savvy. It’s just too bad the dialogue wasn’t voiced though, especially considering the under-emphasized music, which made most cinematic scenes seem too quiet, like dead air on the screen.
The game plays much like a “My First RPG,” in that from beginning to end it isn’t particularly challenging. Now that fact may throw some people off, but for someone like me who was looking to play something easily approachable (considering how hard my last review, Fallout: New Vegas put me through the ringer), it was a damned godsend. You go through a number of different settings (a suburb, a mall, etc.), obtaining candy and different costumes (which act as different characters of-sorts in battle) as well as fighting monsters, which are incidentally where some of the funniest moments of the game occur, as the process of going into battle changes your character from a cute child in a robot suit, for example, into a goddamn walking mech.
Entering into combat will turn you from this…
…into THIS!
Costume Quest, which is priced at 15 dollars on Xbox live, isn’t particularly long, capping in at around 5-6 hours, and if one so desires it can easily be started and finished in a single sitting. But it’s a pretty good testament to the game that people seem willing to do just that. The art style is cute without being too cute, the combat never really puts you through any stress, and it does a very good job of making you want to just pick it up and play. It may not be for the hardcore RPG crowd out there, but for someone like me who just wanted a couple hours of fun, soft gaming, than Costume Quest should be right up your alley.
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