What were my expectations going in?
Well, I like Double Fine, so I had a pretty good feeling about it. Psychonauts falls in among my favorite games of all time, so I figured this couldn't be bad. I'd played the demo long ago and found it fairly enjoyable. I also knew it was meant to be an XBLA/PSN game, so I didn't exactly expect greatness. I guess I just expected it to be "pretty good".
So how was it?
It was pretty good!
While Costume Quest falls very short on a lot of the technical aspects, it more than makes up for it all with quirk, charm, and imagination. The core concept is the idea of believing in your costume. Yeah, these kids may be running around in suits made from cardboard and tinfoil, but in their minds they are a mighty robot warrior, or a knight in shining armor. Outside of combat, the game's various unlockable costumes look like their cheap materials...but in combat, the kids' visions come true, as they become their characters, complete with a variety of special attacks.
Costume Quest's greatest strengths lie in its dialogue. It has that distinct Tim Schafer wit, and that Double Fine feel to it. It's immediately apparent that this was made by the minds behind Psychonauts and Brütal Legend. There are only a few actual laugh-out-loud moments, but almost every line in the game will make you smirk, chuckle, or giggle. I think my favorite line comes when you arrive dressed in Knight and Robot costumes to a party that is exclusively for patriotic costumes only. When you try to enter, the boy guarding the gate says something like "Your costumes represent science and the monarchy! How is that patriotic?!"
Of course your only recourse is to find a Statue Of Liberty costume, which has a patriotic "Anthem" special attack....
Visually, the game is a mixed bag, but leans fairly heavily toward the good. Backgrounds are pretty, but objects in the foreground tend to obscure your view a little bit more than is necessary. Noncombat character designs are...very odd. They take a bit of time to get used to, as they don't really mesh with the art style of the rest of the game. They're very reminiscent of the characters in Animal Crossing, while the rest of the world is very beautifully rendered and artistic. In combat, however, the game takes a gorgeous cel-shaded route that really captures the sense of cartoonish imagination of the game, replete with overly flashy effects.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, the game falls short in other areas. I found myself nitpicking and quibbling with a lot of the game's detail work. My biggest complaint is that dialogue can't be sped up. If you read quickly like I do, then cutscenes will get old fast, because the game assumes everyone reads very slowly. There is no button for "next"; you either sit and wait it out, or you skip the entire damn cutscene. Oddly enough, you can pause cutscenes. Also, the game's locations are fairly spread out and easy to get lost in. A map function would have done wonders.
And then there's combat. Combat should be the most polished part of this game, since it's so close to the game's heart. The whole aspect of becoming your imagination of your costume should be the core of the game, right? Sadly, no. The combat is incredibly fun at first, but quickly becomes repetitive and tiresome. You're given these amazing costumes with badass special abilities, but the battles become routine. There's no strategy to them whatsoever. Round one, attack. Round two, attack. Round three, special move. That's every single fight in the game. Standard attacks are basically quicktime events, and specials are the same animation every single time. They attempt some depth with the "Battle Stamp" power-ups, swappable special abilities you collect throughout the game, but there's not much to them. It's neat seeing each new costume in battle and watching their special attack animations, but it gets old very quickly.
The game is incredibly short. I got nearly 100% completion in under 5 hours. While the dialogue may be priceless and the art and ideas a ton of fun, the gameplay never really manages to be engaging. There are three main areas, which you run around bashing random objects for candy, and completing simple quests. I found the Mall to be the most enjoyable of all of them, but even that wasn't that great...I just got a kick out of the shop names. I found myself equipping the Robot costume 99% of the time, because of its sprint boost ability; otherwise the characters run painfully slow. I only swapped it out when other abilities were needed to solve a "puzzle" (if you can call it that). I think because of all of these faults, the game's brevity sort of works in its favor, never really wearing out its welcome.
Much like The Maw, I think Costume Quest best lends itself to a younger audience. This one is a little smarter, a little wittier. While The Maw is perfect for a young 4-6 year old, Costume Quest would be perfect for the 8 year old to tween crowd. There's nothing actually questionable, but the jokes tend to be a little bit more sardonic and subversive. About on par with most kids' cartoons nowadays. It never treats its audience like they're dumb, and in fact portrays the child characters as much more intelligent and aware than the adults. Also, I don't think kids would get quite as irritated with the combat and uninspired gameplay as I did.
The nice thing is, Costume Quest has been around a few years now, and it goes on sale frequently. It may be flawed, but when you pick it up for $10 or less, it's a great way to kill a couple of hours and get a little chuckle. I've seen it drop to $5 on PSN/XBLA, and even cheaper than that on PC in various bundles. You really can't go wrong picking this game up. It may not be the greatest game Double Fine has ever put out, but it's definitely worthy of carrying their label.
Play time: 5 hours
Finished: Yes.
Recommended: For anyone, but especially kids ages 8+
Available For: PC, XBox 360, PS3
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