Costume Quest
For most of my life (I don’t count the bits of it I can’t remember), I have taken pride in my entertainment media collection. I see it as a trophy for my expression in taste and the amount of money that I’ve put into it. This lasted through my teenage years, into university and out again. Then I got a job and was able to afford the “collectors” editions and the like of all the games I wanted at a greater financial ease than I had before. However, I think this is likely to be changing, and for the better. I have now realised that whilst I still take pride in the amount of media I have and something to actually show for my money, I don’t have the amount of time to spend on those things as I might have a few years ago, and hence they are more disposable.
This is in conjunction with another change that has been happening in the last few years - downloadable/digitally distributed media has become a lot more accessible (note to distributors: this doesn’t mean it’s cheaper for the consumer - it should be!). The quality of downloadable games, specifically in XBLA where there is room for indie developers to get their content out to mainstream relatively quickly, has also dramatically improved and risen the bar particularly high, making the market competitive and advantageous to the gamer. With the likes of Braid, Shadow Complex and Limbo (to name just 3) XBLA is starting to turn into my favourite marketplace to get games. Costume Quest I thought, for price point to quality of game is one of my new favourites and let me explain why:
It makes sense for a games company like Double Fine to change their direction to smaller, more focused games like they are doing under the “Amnesia Fortnights” project. I loved their last major release: Brutal Legend, and when thinking back to why people might not have liked it, you can see the subsets getting smaller: the number of people who like metal, those who like metal who like games, those who like games and metal who like RTS games (specifically console ones)… you get the idea. It took four years to make Brutal Legend and its core market was going to be smaller than your average game, that’s why it went through such difficulties securing investment by publishers. But I don’t believe that it is any longer an issue that large games companies have to release full retail games that have to do well otherwise it will be the end of them, because the XBLA-esque markets are strong enough to support them.
As people who know me would tell you, I’m not the biggest fan of the genre that Costume Quest falls into - turn based RPG. But Costume Quest is the prime example of what an XBLA game should be - it’s short enough to keep anyone who starts the game to carry on playing to completion and it’s long enough to give you a sense of accomplishment when you have. The combat is so quick that it doesn’t even really feel like it’s turn based, and the main quest is so concise that you get a good idea of what you’ve got to do and how long it will take you.
But that’s not entirely why I loved Costume Quest though - Tim Schafer has always been the best comedy writer for games. But more-so than comedy, his studios push the boundaries of what the content and context of games can be about - meaning this isn’t another Gears of War/Call of Duty run and gun type game, or even a Final Fantasy. It takes the core elements of an existing genre and surrounds it with an original story (I can’t remember any other game that is based around the actual holiday of Halloween) and fantastic presentation that I doubt anyone couldn’t find endearing and just plain cool.
I think the game works well in the genre (for someone who doesn’t traditionally like that kind of genre) because the scope of the quests are quite small. Even being able to collect everything in game doesn’t seem like a chore like in other games because you can quite easily see what you have to get. Put it this way: I got every single achievement in the game in one play through without looking at the list of what you had to do to get them.
Overall: You should get this game, because it’s easy to play, addictive but not too long, and you should support Double Fine!
