Spartan Review: Costume Quest a Wonderful Treat

I’m a sucker for cute-looking games. Add cute costumes, hilarious writing and old-school RPG-style gameplay and well, you already had me at “cute.”

Which brings us to Double Fine’s latest pimple-worthy game, Costume Quest. Why pimple-worthy you ask? Well, let’s just say I tend to get pimples when I stay up late. And up late I was recently cause I couldn't put this darn game down. Curse you, Double Fine!

Anywho, Costume Quest has you assuming the role of one of two siblings who decide to go trick or treating together during Halloween. Unfortunately, one of them gets kidnapped by IQ-challenged monsters who mistake the hapless sibling for a giant, talking piece of candy. Fortunately, your costumes grant you incredible powers against monsters, helping immensely in your quest to save your sibling and avoid getting grounded.

To make life easier, you can enlist allies in your quest while collecting new costume designs and materials to expand your monster-bashing wardrobe. You can also use the candy you’ve collected to buy helpful skill stamps from aspiring little entreprenuer Sadie to boost your strength, counter enemy attacks and stun enemies. Action is turn-based and relies heavily on timed button presses to boost your attacks and guard enemy attacks.

Dialogue scrolls a bit too fast to read in the beginning and there was also one time when my game froze while I was robot skating in my blue bot costume. But its simple and solid gameplay, along with its hilarious dialogue make Costume Quest a real yummy treat.

Cost: $15 download, PS3 and Xbox 360

http://www.costumequestgame.com

This review also appears at the Reno Gazette-Journal Sunday Tech page on Oct. 31, 2010.

It's Aliiiiive! Introducing Spartan Game Reviews

Ooh, check out my blog's new "retina display" display, ha, ha. Hey, try not to bring up the blog while you're surfing at Starbucks, OK? Lord knows I don't want you to be deluged by a swarm of females who suddenly find you irresistible even without an iPad.

So I, um, apparently haven't blogged about games for a while, which is kind of funny because I haven't played as many games as I have in the last few months since maybe college. But, hey, that's what happens when you work two jobs. After all, what is a man? Nothing but a miserable pile of lemmings in the old rat race. But enough talk, have at you!

Now, one of the things I do in my day job is review games for a certain publication, hence the reason I played a lot of games. With that in mind, I figure that I might as well post that stuff here for more mass multimedia penetration. (For those of you giggling after reading that, I'm telling your mom.)

Which brings us to my latest addition to the blog: Spartan Reviews. Basically, there are quick takes on a featured game in about 300 or so words — ya know 300, like that movie about the less-than ideally armored Spartans led by a Scottish dude? Not to brag but this kind of sharp, impressive wit is exactly the reason why  I haven't become a millionaire yet. Then again, "yet" kind of has the connotation that I might be in the future, which I wouldn't hold my breath on.

Um, what the heck was I talking about again?