It’s that time of year again: kids are planning elaborate costumes their parents can’t afford, overpriced bagged candies are flying off store shelves and young ladies are finding the sluttiest combination of clothes they can find to go with their novelty cat ears headband and the like. Oh Halloween, the beacon of almost all of my fondest childhood memories.
Unfortunately, gone are the days of innocent childhood fun that I used to partake in, partially because I’m all grown up now, but mainly because I just don’t fit into my Mighty Mouse costume anymore.
These days Halloween mostly for me is an evening with some of my favourite classic B movies about zombies and other assorted monsters as I chuckle the night away with occasional breaks to hand out candy to the six kids that visit the neighborhood to trick-or-treat (seriously has anyone else noticed the severe lack of kids trick-or-treating anymore?)
Fortunately, a little developing house called Double Fine has taken it upon themselves to make a fun little Halloween themed, JRPG style game for the XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network titled Costume Quest.
Costume Quest puts the “wee!” back in Halloween!… yes I know that was bad…
Costume Quest takes us back to a simpler time in our lives, where all we needed was some tape, cardboard, watercolour paints and a big imagination and we could be anything we wanted on Halloween night, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Story The story goes a little something like this: The game opens with a pair of twins, one boy and one girl, bickering about going out trick-or-treating. This is a methodical character select screen and it’s pretty cute how they handle it. Once the player chooses their main character, the kids go out into the night to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood, but alas, monsters abduct the other kid and it’s up to you to go save them!.. the other kid, not the monsters.
Along you will go, battling monsters, collecting candy and making new friends to aid you as you journey out to save your sibling and stop the hilarious but still somewhat evil monsters. From smalltown USA neighborhoods to malls to eerie graveyards, Costume Quest will be a Halloween romp that, at times, is more of a time machine to days long gone than it is a video game.
Gameplay The game handles like a very user-friendly Japanese Role Playing Game. Players will traverse the regions, talking to NPCs, visiting locations and taking on side quests to build up their skill level, making them stronger against the horde of monsters that comedically terrorize the night.
I would like to say that the controls are very responsive, but there’s not really a huge need for them to be as good as they are. This is a very watered down JRPG style, so the required snap reflexes that other games demand will not be present here. Monster battles are in a very basic, turn-based style that lacks the depth of a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Quest, since the player will mostly just be bashing the monsters with their costume’s accessories until their power move is available, rinse and repeat.
Though the game is simple, it’s play is by no means bad. Some basic strategies will need to come in to play time and again and some of the battles can be a little close, but the game isn’t punishingly difficult, this is an Ages 10+ rated game after all.
Graphics The game looks a lot like Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Comic style cell shaded graphics dominate the look of this game, and it pulls it off great. Obviously is lacks the sheer polish of Wind Waker, but when comparing a huge-budget masterpiece that was in development for years against a small downloadable game that was probably put together in a few months by a staff a tenth of the size, you can’t expect a perfect clone in that department.
Regardless, the game looks really good. It’s cartoony and cute and just captures the childhood innocence that I fondly try to still link to Halloween.
Sound A common trend in spooky-style games these days is to have music that seems almost to mock the potential scariness of the game; a clear homage to Dawn of the Dead’s shopping mall music, and I love it. The Dead Rising franchise is a perfect example of this, as the game is filled with cheerful muzac while the player is faced with an endless horde of the undead. The same applies here, though the scariness level and number of threats are way down in Costume Quest in comparison to the previously mentioned franchise, the music is no less happy-go-lucky and really spoofs the whole concept of anything being truly scary; it’s a trend of attempted irony, saying “I should be a little scared, but this music just makes that impossible”. It’s a funny trend that will likely never die, and it adds very nicely to this game, keeping the atmosphere light and humourous.
What I Liked This game just encompasses all that I loved about Halloween. Though the kids are running around in shoddy costumes haphazardly thrown together, when they combat the monsters, they become the powerful beings they see themselves as in their imagination; a mighty knight, a powerful robot warrior, the sky is the limit for these kids as they draw courage from their imagination, and to me that was mainly what Halloween always was: a celebration of imagination.
The game is universally accessible as anyone could play this, young and old, veteran gamers or casual, or even someone who has never even touched a JRPG game before.
I also love the humour, though this game is by all appearances a “kiddy game”, the humour is pretty risque at times, and other times downright dark. Fortunately the delivery of these jokes will go right over young childrens’ heads, but there were a few lines of dialogue from NPCs that made me stop and laugh.
I can’t express enough how much this game takes me back, I found myself immediately falling into my old childhood Halloween habits and strategies: running along one side of the street first to hit all the houses on that side, using time more efficiently, then hit the entire other side instead of bouncing back and forth etc etc. Meeting new friends, having imaginary adventures in that 45 second time slot between houses, and saving your sibling from monsters all along the way… yeah my early childhood years in Pennsylvania were a lot different than the later ones in Canada let me tell ya.
What I Would Change I know I say this in just about every game I review that doesn’t include it: but multiplayer! Online and/or offline! Yes this is a turn-based RPG, but Final Fantasy 6 pulled it off almost 20 years ago, I don’t see why it couldn’t be done today. It would just further capture the nostalgic fondness of Halloween, it was always a lot more fun to go running around with your friends than it was by yourself.
Final Thoughts Costume Quest is a fun little title that will take you back to those days when Halloween was fun and innocent: before the teenage years when you started egging houses and smashing Jack O’Lanterns and before the current time where now you go to parties just to see which of your female friends looks the most self-degrading, this is a time-travel back to a simpler time when Halloween had an innocence that we lavished as children.
Hardcore gamers will no doubt hate this game because of its simplicity and “kiddy” style, but anyone who likes to just have some fun and a lot of laughs will have a lot of fun with this downloadable title; the hardcore gamers can keep their Silent Hills and Resident Evils this Hallo
ween, this year I’m going to be going on a cell shaded trip of childhood nostalgia.
written by Lee Clifford
It’s that time of year again: kids are planning elaborate costumes their parents can’t afford, overpriced bagged candies are flying off store shelves and young ladies are finding the sluttiest combination of clothes they can find to go with their novelty cat ears headband and the like. Oh Halloween, the beacon of almost all of my fondest childhood memories.
Unfortunately, gone are the days of innocent childhood fun that I used to partake in, partially because I’m all grown up now, but mainly because I just don’t fit into my Mighty Mouse costume anymore.
These days Halloween mostly for me is an evening with some of my favourite classic B movies about zombies and other assorted monsters as I chuckle the night away with occasional breaks to hand out candy to the six kids that visit the neighborhood to trick-or-treat (seriously has anyone else noticed the severe lack of kids trick-or-treating anymore?)
Fortunately, a little developing house called Double Fine has taken it upon themselves to make a fun little Halloween themed, JRPG style game for the XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network titled Costume Quest.
Costume Quest puts the “wee!” back in Halloween!… yes I know that was bad…
Costume Quest takes us back to a simpler time in our lives, where all we needed was some tape, cardboard, watercolour paints and a big imagination and we could be anything we wanted on Halloween night, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Story The story goes a little something like this: The game opens with a pair of twins, one boy and one girl, bickering about going out trick-or-treating. This is a methodical character select screen and it’s pretty cute how they handle it. Once the player chooses their main character, the kids go out into the night to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood, but alas, monsters abduct the other kid and it’s up to you to go save them!.. the other kid, not the monsters.
Along you will go, battling monsters, collecting candy and making new friends to aid you as you journey out to save your sibling and stop the hilarious but still somewhat evil monsters. From smalltown USA neighborhoods to malls to eerie graveyards, Costume Quest will be a Halloween romp that, at times, is more of a time machine to days long gone than it is a video game.
Gameplay The game handles like a very user-friendly Japanese Role Playing Game. Players will traverse the regions, talking to NPCs, visiting locations and taking on side quests to build up their skill level, making them stronger against the horde of monsters that comedically terrorize the night.
I would like to say that the controls are very responsive, but there’s not really a huge need for them to be as good as they are. This is a very watered down JRPG style, so the required snap reflexes that other games demand will not be present here. Monster battles are in a very basic, turn-based style that lacks the depth of a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Quest, since the player will mostly just be bashing the monsters with their costume’s accessories until their power move is available, rinse and repeat.
Though the game is simple, it’s play is by no means bad. Some basic strategies will need to come in to play time and again and some of the battles can be a little close, but the game isn’t punishingly difficult, this is an Ages 10+ rated game after all.
Graphics The game looks a lot like Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Comic style cell shaded graphics dominate the look of this game, and it pulls it off great. Obviously is lacks the sheer polish of Wind Waker, but when comparing a huge-budget masterpiece that was in development for years against a small downloadable game that was probably put together in a few months by a staff a tenth of the size, you can’t expect a perfect clone in that department.
Regardless, the game looks really good. It’s cartoony and cute and just captures the childhood innocence that I fondly try to still link to Halloween.
Sound A common trend in spooky-style games these days is to have music that seems almost to mock the potential scariness of the game; a clear homage to Dawn of the Dead’s shopping mall music, and I love it. The Dead Rising franchise is a perfect example of this, as the game is filled with cheerful muzac while the player is faced with an endless horde of the undead. The same applies here, though the scariness level and number of threats are way down in Costume Quest in comparison to the previously mentioned franchise, the music is no less happy-go-lucky and really spoofs the whole concept of anything being truly scary; it’s a trend of attempted irony, saying “I should be a little scared, but this music just makes that impossible”. It’s a funny trend that will likely never die, and it adds very nicely to this game, keeping the atmosphere light and humourous.
What I Liked This game just encompasses all that I loved about Halloween. Though the kids are running around in shoddy costumes haphazardly thrown together, when they combat the monsters, they become the powerful beings they see themselves as in their imagination; a mighty knight, a powerful robot warrior, the sky is the limit for these kids as they draw courage from their imagination, and to me that was mainly what Halloween always was: a celebration of imagination.
The game is universally accessible as anyone could play this, young and old, veteran gamers or casual, or even someone who has never even touched a JRPG game before.
I also love the humour, though this game is by all appearances a “kiddy game”, the humour is pretty risque at times, and other times downright dark. Fortunately the delivery of these jokes will go right over young childrens’ heads, but there were a few lines of dialogue from NPCs that made me stop and laugh.
I can’t express enough how much this game takes me back, I found myself immediately falling into my old childhood Halloween habits and strategies: running along one side of the street first to hit all the houses on that side, using time more efficiently, then hit the entire other side instead of bouncing back and forth etc etc. Meeting new friends, having imaginary adventures in that 45 second time slot between houses, and saving your sibling from monsters all along the way… yeah my early childhood years in Pennsylvania were a lot different than the later ones in Canada let me tell ya.
What I Would Change I know I say this in just about every game I review that doesn’t include it: but multiplayer! Online and/or offline! Yes this is a turn-based RPG, but Final Fantasy 6 pulled it off almost 20 years ago, I don’t see why it couldn’t be done today. It would just further capture the nostalgic fondness of Halloween, it was always a lot more fun to go running around with your friends than it was by yourself.
Final Thoughts Costume Quest is a fun little title that will take you back to those days when Halloween was fun and innocent: before the teenage years when you started egging houses and smashing Jack O’Lanterns and before the current time where now you go to parties just to see which of your female friends looks the most self-degrading, this is a time-travel back to a simpler time when Halloween had an innocence that we lavished as children.
Hardcore gamers will no doubt hate this game because of its simplicity and “kiddy” style, but anyone who likes to just have some fun and a lot of laughs will have a lot of fun with this downloadable title; the hardcore gamers can keep their Silent Hills and Resident Evils this Hallo
ween, this year I’m going to be going on a cell shaded trip of childhood nostalgia.
written by Lee Clifford
It’s that time of year again: kids are planning elaborate costumes their parents can’t afford, overpriced bagged candies are flying off store shelves and young ladies are finding the sluttiest combination of clothes they can find to go with their novelty cat ears headband and the like. Oh Halloween, the beacon of almost all of my fondest childhood memories.
Unfortunately, gone are the days of innocent childhood fun that I used to partake in, partially because I’m all grown up now, but mainly because I just don’t fit into my Mighty Mouse costume anymore.
These days Halloween mostly for me is an evening with some of my favourite classic B movies about zombies and other assorted monsters as I chuckle the night away with occasional breaks to hand out candy to the six kids that visit the neighborhood to trick-or-treat (seriously has anyone else noticed the severe lack of kids trick-or-treating anymore?)
Fortunately, a little developing house called Double Fine has taken it upon themselves to make a fun little Halloween themed, JRPG style game for the XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network titled Costume Quest.
Costume Quest puts the “wee!” back in Halloween!… yes I know that was bad…
Costume Quest takes us back to a simpler time in our lives, where all we needed was some tape, cardboard, watercolour paints and a big imagination and we could be anything we wanted on Halloween night, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Story The story goes a little something like this: The game opens with a pair of twins, one boy and one girl, bickering about going out trick-or-treating. This is a methodical character select screen and it’s pretty cute how they handle it. Once the player chooses their main character, the kids go out into the night to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood, but alas, monsters abduct the other kid and it’s up to you to go save them!.. the other kid, not the monsters.
Along you will go, battling monsters, collecting candy and making new friends to aid you as you journey out to save your sibling and stop the hilarious but still somewhat evil monsters. From smalltown USA neighborhoods to malls to eerie graveyards, Costume Quest will be a Halloween romp that, at times, is more of a time machine to days long gone than it is a video game.
Gameplay The game handles like a very user-friendly Japanese Role Playing Game. Players will traverse the regions, talking to NPCs, visiting locations and taking on side quests to build up their skill level, making them stronger against the horde of monsters that comedically terrorize the night.
I would like to say that the controls are very responsive, but there’s not really a huge need for them to be as good as they are. This is a very watered down JRPG style, so the required snap reflexes that other games demand will not be present here. Monster battles are in a very basic, turn-based style that lacks the depth of a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Quest, since the player will mostly just be bashing the monsters with their costume’s accessories until their power move is available, rinse and repeat.
Though the game is simple, it’s play is by no means bad. Some basic strategies will need to come in to play time and again and some of the battles can be a little close, but the game isn’t punishingly difficult, this is an Ages 10+ rated game after all.
Graphics The game looks a lot like Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Comic style cell shaded graphics dominate the look of this game, and it pulls it off great. Obviously is lacks the sheer polish of Wind Waker, but when comparing a huge-budget masterpiece that was in development for years against a small downloadable game that was probably put together in a few months by a staff a tenth of the size, you can’t expect a perfect clone in that department.
Regardless, the game looks really good. It’s cartoony and cute and just captures the childhood innocence that I fondly try to still link to Halloween.
Sound A common trend in spooky-style games these days is to have music that seems almost to mock the potential scariness of the game; a clear homage to Dawn of the Dead’s shopping mall music, and I love it. The Dead Rising franchise is a perfect example of this, as the game is filled with cheerful muzac while the player is faced with an endless horde of the undead. The same applies here, though the scariness level and number of threats are way down in Costume Quest in comparison to the previously mentioned franchise, the music is no less happy-go-lucky and really spoofs the whole concept of anything being truly scary; it’s a trend of attempted irony, saying “I should be a little scared, but this music just makes that impossible”. It’s a funny trend that will likely never die, and it adds very nicely to this game, keeping the atmosphere light and humourous.
What I Liked This game just encompasses all that I loved about Halloween. Though the kids are running around in shoddy costumes haphazardly thrown together, when they combat the monsters, they become the powerful beings they see themselves as in their imagination; a mighty knight, a powerful robot warrior, the sky is the limit for these kids as they draw courage from their imagination, and to me that was mainly what Halloween always was: a celebration of imagination.
The game is universally accessible as anyone could play this, young and old, veteran gamers or casual, or even someone who has never even touched a JRPG game before.
I also love the humour, though this game is by all appearances a “kiddy game”, the humour is pretty risque at times, and other times downright dark. Fortunately the delivery of these jokes will go right over young childrens’ heads, but there were a few lines of dialogue from NPCs that made me stop and laugh.
I can’t express enough how much this game takes me back, I found myself immediately falling into my old childhood Halloween habits and strategies: running along one side of the street first to hit all the houses on that side, using time more efficiently, then hit the entire other side instead of bouncing back and forth etc etc. Meeting new friends, having imaginary adventures in that 45 second time slot between houses, and saving your sibling from monsters all along the way… yeah my early childhood years in Pennsylvania were a lot different than the later ones in Canada let me tell ya.
What I Would Change I know I say this in just about every game I review that doesn’t include it: but multiplayer! Online and/or offline! Yes this is a turn-based RPG, but Final Fantasy 6 pulled it off almost 20 years ago, I don’t see why it couldn’t be done today. It would just further capture the nostalgic fondness of Halloween, it was always a lot more fun to go running around with your friends than it was by yourself.
Final Thoughts Costume Quest is a fun little title that will take you back to those days when Halloween was fun and innocent: before the teenage years when you started egging houses and smashing Jack O’Lanterns and before the current time where now you go to parties just to see which of your female friends looks the most self-degrading, this is a time-travel back to a simpler time when Halloween had an innocence that we lavished as children.
Hardcore gamers will no doubt hate this game because of its simplicity and “kiddy” style, but anyone who likes to just have some fun and a lot of laughs will have a lot of fun with this downloadable title; the hardcore gamers can keep their Silent Hills and Resident Evils this Hallo
ween, this year I’m going to be going on a cell shaded trip of childhood nostalgia.
written by Lee Clifford
It’s that time of year again: kids are planning elaborate costumes their parents can’t afford, overpriced bagged candies are flying off store shelves and young ladies are finding the sluttiest combination of clothes they can find to go with their novelty cat ears headband and the like. Oh Halloween, the beacon of almost all of my fondest childhood memories.
Unfortunately, gone are the days of innocent childhood fun that I used to partake in, partially because I’m all grown up now, but mainly because I just don’t fit into my Mighty Mouse costume anymore.
These days Halloween mostly for me is an evening with some of my favourite classic B movies about zombies and other assorted monsters as I chuckle the night away with occasional breaks to hand out candy to the six kids that visit the neighborhood to trick-or-treat (seriously has anyone else noticed the severe lack of kids trick-or-treating anymore?)
Fortunately, a little developing house called Double Fine has taken it upon themselves to make a fun little Halloween themed, JRPG style game for the XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network titled Costume Quest.
Costume Quest puts the “wee!” back in Halloween!… yes I know that was bad…
Costume Quest takes us back to a simpler time in our lives, where all we needed was some tape, cardboard, watercolour paints and a big imagination and we could be anything we wanted on Halloween night, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Story The story goes a little something like this: The game opens with a pair of twins, one boy and one girl, bickering about going out trick-or-treating. This is a methodical character select screen and it’s pretty cute how they handle it. Once the player chooses their main character, the kids go out into the night to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood, but alas, monsters abduct the other kid and it’s up to you to go save them!.. the other kid, not the monsters.
Along you will go, battling monsters, collecting candy and making new friends to aid you as you journey out to save your sibling and stop the hilarious but still somewhat evil monsters. From smalltown USA neighborhoods to malls to eerie graveyards, Costume Quest will be a Halloween romp that, at times, is more of a time machine to days long gone than it is a video game.
Gameplay The game handles like a very user-friendly Japanese Role Playing Game. Players will traverse the regions, talking to NPCs, visiting locations and taking on side quests to build up their skill level, making them stronger against the horde of monsters that comedically terrorize the night.
I would like to say that the controls are very responsive, but there’s not really a huge need for them to be as good as they are. This is a very watered down JRPG style, so the required snap reflexes that other games demand will not be present here. Monster battles are in a very basic, turn-based style that lacks the depth of a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Quest, since the player will mostly just be bashing the monsters with their costume’s accessories until their power move is available, rinse and repeat.
Though the game is simple, it’s play is by no means bad. Some basic strategies will need to come in to play time and again and some of the battles can be a little close, but the game isn’t punishingly difficult, this is an Ages 10+ rated game after all.
Graphics The game looks a lot like Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Comic style cell shaded graphics dominate the look of this game, and it pulls it off great. Obviously is lacks the sheer polish of Wind Waker, but when comparing a huge-budget masterpiece that was in development for years against a small downloadable game that was probably put together in a few months by a staff a tenth of the size, you can’t expect a perfect clone in that department.
Regardless, the game looks really good. It’s cartoony and cute and just captures the childhood innocence that I fondly try to still link to Halloween.
Sound A common trend in spooky-style games these days is to have music that seems almost to mock the potential scariness of the game; a clear homage to Dawn of the Dead’s shopping mall music, and I love it. The Dead Rising franchise is a perfect example of this, as the game is filled with cheerful muzac while the player is faced with an endless horde of the undead. The same applies here, though the scariness level and number of threats are way down in Costume Quest in comparison to the previously mentioned franchise, the music is no less happy-go-lucky and really spoofs the whole concept of anything being truly scary; it’s a trend of attempted irony, saying “I should be a little scared, but this music just makes that impossible”. It’s a funny trend that will likely never die, and it adds very nicely to this game, keeping the atmosphere light and humourous.
What I Liked This game just encompasses all that I loved about Halloween. Though the kids are running around in shoddy costumes haphazardly thrown together, when they combat the monsters, they become the powerful beings they see themselves as in their imagination; a mighty knight, a powerful robot warrior, the sky is the limit for these kids as they draw courage from their imagination, and to me that was mainly what Halloween always was: a celebration of imagination.
The game is universally accessible as anyone could play this, young and old, veteran gamers or casual, or even someone who has never even touched a JRPG game before.
I also love the humour, though this game is by all appearances a “kiddy game”, the humour is pretty risque at times, and other times downright dark. Fortunately the delivery of these jokes will go right over young childrens’ heads, but there were a few lines of dialogue from NPCs that made me stop and laugh.
I can’t express enough how much this game takes me back, I found myself immediately falling into my old childhood Halloween habits and strategies: running along one side of the street first to hit all the houses on that side, using time more efficiently, then hit the entire other side instead of bouncing back and forth etc etc. Meeting new friends, having imaginary adventures in that 45 second time slot between houses, and saving your sibling from monsters all along the way… yeah my early childhood years in Pennsylvania were a lot different than the later ones in Canada let me tell ya.
What I Would Change I know I say this in just about every game I review that doesn’t include it: but multiplayer! Online and/or offline! Yes this is a turn-based RPG, but Final Fantasy 6 pulled it off almost 20 years ago, I don’t see why it couldn’t be done today. It would just further capture the nostalgic fondness of Halloween, it was always a lot more fun to go running around with your friends than it was by yourself.
Final Thoughts Costume Quest is a fun little title that will take you back to those days when Halloween was fun and innocent: before the teenage years when you started egging houses and smashing Jack O’Lanterns and before the current time where now you go to parties just to see which of your female friends looks the most self-degrading, this is a time-travel back to a simpler time when Halloween had an innocence that we lavished as children.
Hardcore gamers will no doubt hate this game because of its simplicity and “kiddy” style, but anyone who likes to just have some fun and a lot of laughs will have a lot of fun with this downloadable title; the hardcore gamers can keep their Silent Hills and Resident Evils this Hallo
ween, this year I’m going to be going on a cell shaded trip of childhood nostalgia.
