OXCGN’s Costume Quest XBLA Review

Is this game a bag of candy or a scary monster

by: aksobey

©2010 Kent Sobey

Costume Quest will have you craving candy from start to finish.

You start this Xbox Live Arcade game as either Wren or Reynold, a couple of twins who are forced by their parents to trick-or-treat together. Shortly after you pick your character (either Wren or Reynold) your sibling is kidnapped by a seemingly sugar starved monster, after which it becomes obvious that the evil Dorsilla the witch is behind the monsters invading your world with a nefarious plan to steal all of the candy.

You quickly make a friend by defeating the school bully at a race with your first costume (a robot) and do various other rather simple ‘quests’ which serve as training for the game.

Of course none of the adults believe the monsters are there and don’t seem to see them so it is up to you to not only save your sister but stop Dorsilla and her hungry henchmen.

Fortunately you have a friend to help from early on and pick another one up along the way.

• Costume Quest Trailer

They are more than happy to share their costumes with you and you pick up pieces of new ones as you go – you need to collect 3 items to make each costume and each one has its own ability which makes some of them absolutely necessary to complete the game.

While in the ‘normal world’ your costumes look like normal Halloween costumes, when you enter the battlefield they turn into so much more and give you the power to defeat the candy thieves.

Without going into much more detail about the story for fear of ruining it I will say that it makes for great fun and is tremendously enjoyable.

It may seem somewhat childish to begin with but the characters’ witty charm becomes apparent the more they interact with each other and their foes. They are, for lack of a better word, cute.

The combat mechanism is reminiscent of ‘Heroes of Might and Magic’ in that it is turn based and you cycle through each team member. This does get a little monotonous eventually but you have enough costumes by the end of the game to mix it up a bit and keep it as interesting as possible.

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You can also enhance your character by using customisations for battle called ‘battle stamps’. Each of your team members can have one stamp which gives them a power up of sorts for while in the fight – some of which are very useful.

Graphically, costume quest is nothing special but it certainly isn’t bad for what it is- an Xbox Live Arcade title. I have seen much worse, and I have seen much better.

There is plenty of humour throughout the game which will keep you entertained and may even let you see past the repetitive nature of each stage. A little more could have been done to add some differentiating factors to each stage because sadly they are all the same except for the way they look.

There is no voice acting, which in my opinion would have made the game much more interesting. You have to read everything that is said which can in some ways destroy the tone of what is being said and sometimes the meaning might even be lost. I certainly do not want to read everything; I want to listen to it, but it may just be me?

A definite plus for the game is the unique nature of it. I have not played anything like it before and this to me is great. I, for one, am getting tired of the same old stories being re-hashed over and over. AAA game developers could take a page out of the XBLA game book and start to think of truly original ideas like this one.

All in all, the game feels a little rushed though (which I suspect it was). Having said that, I still think it pulls it off in the end. This is definitely one worth playing despite all of its downsides.

Costume quest deserves a strong recommendation to give it a try.

“7.5/10

©2010 Kent Sobey

Check out our latest comp while you’re here – OXCGN’s Splatterhouse Horrendous Head Hunt – $AU 1000+ WORTH OF PRIZES UP FOR GRAB

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Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Game Impressions, New Xbox 360 Games, XBLA News-Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Game Reviews Tagged: | Costume, Costume Quest, Double Fine Productions, Halloween, PlayStation Network, Tim Schafer, Trick-or-treating, XBLA, Xbox Live Arcade