Game Review: Costume Quest

Double Fine is widely heralded as delivering some of the most charming and witty games ever released, and is generally regarded amongst many game enthusiasts as one of the best publishers around. Still, after some mixed reviews of Brutal Legend -- their last game -- some may have been wary of Costume Quest. I'll just start off by saying, while I do have some gripes of the game, it easily charms it's way out of them.

The downloadable sector really helps the game conquer annoyances that might have made it a chore to finish if it was a much longer, disc-based game. A sort of RPG-light would best describe the structure surrounding the game, but they've made attempts at tweaking the old-school, RPG formula to better suit their needs.

You can collect multiple costumes throughout the game, that each have their own unique abilities. And every costume has it's own means of attacking -- doing away with merely pressing attack and waiting for an animation to finish. You might have to quickly press a random button that flashes on screen, or time your button press to a specific spot on a meter.

While this idea did provide a bit of spice to what might have otherwise been a tedious fight, you quickly became accustomed to the various costumes and what you had to achieve to successfully pull off your attack. And besides, even if you missed, you'd still land a slightly weakened blow.

Then there was the means of disguising what normally bothers a lot of people about RPGs; Random battles. Later in the game the monsters stroll the map and you can mostly avoid them if you're truly sick of battling, though doing so can easily handicap your advancement in the game. The other half -- if not even more -- of your fights revolve around trick-or-treating.

You knock on a door, and you're either greeted by a monster or some candy (Your currency in the game.) While it's a clever way to implement the system, it starts to feel tedious pretty quickly. There are three areas in the game and at each one of them you must knock on 16 doors and either fight someone or get candy. It feels a bit like an artificial way to extend the game.

Still, all of these complaints are easily negated by the two major positives of Costume Quest: It doesn't overstay it's welcome, and it's charming as hell. In many ways, making the game a downloadable title was probably the best move Double Fine ever made for the game. While I might be a bit biased because parenting has drastically limited my gaming time, I really love shorter games that successfully tell their story and then get out before they wear thin.

Costume Quest delivers a heaping helping of charm in just the right amount of time, and easily makes you smirk several times along the way. It could easily become a yearly tradition for the type of people who like to amp up their holiday experiences using various forms of themed media. If Double Fine sat down and thought out a way to make similar games based around other holidays, I would most likely play and enjoy those as well -- provided they refreshed the formula enough to warrant it.

Score: 4 out of 5
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