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dkirschner's Costume Quest (PC)

[January 13, 2013 10:23:52 AM]

In my final frenzy before heading back to work, I knocked out Costume Quest. I *love* this game. It's adorable, funny, clever, and all about Halloween and trick-or-treating and costumes. You play as either a male or female twin. The other one gets kidnapped by monsters, who have invaded your neighborhood to steal all the candy to bring back to the monster world to give to their big boss, who looks like a fat grim reaper. The game is an RPG, so you walk around exploring the neighborhood, trick-or-treating, fighting and completing quests. You progress through the main story by quests and trick-or-treating. You always have to trick-or-treat at all the houses/shops in each level. Sometimes a human answers the door and gives you candy and other times a monster answers and fights you. In the field, you collect candy, find costume parts to create costumes using blueprints that you find, and talk to NPCs. Candy is used to buy 'battle stamps,' which are like accessories that add combat abilities, increase defense or attack, that kind of thing. Each character can equip one. Each character also can equip one costume, and you can change costumes and battle stamps in the field whenever you want. Changing costumes for their various abilities reminded me of Stacking, accumulating dolls for their abilities. Speaking of, I found a fun Stacking easter egg in the DLC! Your main character can use the ability of the costume s/he is wearing, if it has one. The robot costume can zoom around the map with rocket boots. The knight can create a protective shield to get past obstacles. The pirate can use ziplines with his hook. And so on.

Each costume also has a different special ability in battle. Using the same examples, the robot fires a missile barrage, the knight casts a protective shield, and the pirate...well, I never fought with the pirate. Battles are very simple. You have a basic attack, a special attack which has to charge for a couple rounds, and a battle stamp ability if you have one equipped. You score criticals by successfully doing quicktime events, hitting the button that pops up or whatever. You can also defend the same way when enemies attack. Boss battles are straightforward and easy. The boss for the Grubbins on Ice DLC was the most fun and challenging of them all. The final boss for the main game was also relatively difficult, requiring me at least to run away and change costumes and battle stamps.

One complaint I have read about the game is that it is simplistic and the mechanics get stale. I think the length was just right, roughly 6 hours for the main game. Much longer and I may have gotten a bit tired of the fighting. However, the rest of the game remained fun. Each level (there are 3, plus 1 DLC) has some of the same quests (bobbing for apples, hide 'n seek, trading cards), but I don't think they got stale. They weren't time consuming or out-of-the-way or anything, and they always gave neat rewards. The level designs were great, pretty simple, never got lost, but big enough to explore and find most everything. I was a few costumes short by the end, missing a piece here and there, and I was missing only one trading card! It was probably just a random one you get in battle in level 2 that I didn't find. The trading cards are funny. They are all candy/food but with gross names and pictures that reminded me of Garbage Pail Kids. I remember Caramold with a picture of a moldy caramel bar, Cake Cod, which was a cake shaped like a cod, and Cuttin' Candy, which was cotton candy in the shape of a butcher's knife. I don't know why I remember all the C words first. There are like 50 cards and they all made me chuckle. The humor in the game is great. If you like Tim Schafer/Double Fine's brand of humor, you'll love this.

Amazing game. DLC ends on a cliffhanger. More, please. Play this!

*Edit* I played this using Steam Box. It works. It is awesome. Hooked up my laptop to the TV, plugged in my Xbox controller, and played Costume Quest on the TV like a console game. I have like 41 games with controller support. Steam knows exactly what they are doing. Now if I want to play a PC game, but I want that on-the-couch-in-front-of-a-big-TV experience, I can. Consoles the world over quiver in fear. I think the real benefit will be when modded games get controller support, if they don't already. Take Skyrim for instance. If you buy it on console, it's just the game and DLC. On PC, you have access to tons of mods. Same with Portal 2 and a ton of other games, which is why I play these on PC. But sometimes, I'm like man, I just want to play this on the couch. If I could get the mods and the couch, I would be very happy. Steam Box, makin' it happen.

This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 13th, 2013 at 19:22:51.