Hot off of releasing a game steeped in metal culture, Double Fine Productions has come out with Costume Quest, an adorable Halloween-themed simple RPG with some really funny writing and great atmosphere. It’s an enjoyable if sometimes tedious title that’s well worth the low price of admission even though it’s far from Halloween season right now.
You play as your choice of a brother and sister going out for trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Whichever character you don’t choose will dress up for Halloween as a giant piece of candy corn, which (besides being widely mocked) will wind up with them being abducted by the “grubbins,” creatures that are ransacking the town for all its candy unbeknownst to every adult. The candy corn outfit makes the child appear to be simply an especially large and enticing piece of candy, and the rest of the game is spent tracking down your sibling to rescue him from being devoured by demons from some otherwordly plane.
To do this, you team up with two other neighborhood kids and collect materials to make different Halloween costumes, each of which has its own special abilities to take down the grubbins. These costumes transform from cute child outfits in the overworld into giant menacing suits of destruction in combat, which is always a hilarious transition to see for each new costume you collect. From robots and ninjas to unicorns and cats, they all have serious combat abilities that aren’t necessarily clear in their original forms.
The combat is very simple to understand, but because of that, it also gets repetitive very quickly. Special attacks are charged over two or three battle turns, so most battles are simple attacks every turn until you can use your charged-up special abilities. Therefore all the strategy actually comes before the battle, in choosing the costumes your character and his or her allies should wear, and which “battle stamps” they should each carry. Battle stamps keep an extra special ability of some sort and each character may use one, which sometimes have huge benefits in terms of attack strength or HP. Like many other RPGs, combat eventually becomes quite tedious, though by the end there is a bit more strategy and thought that goes into certain boss battles than you’ll see at the beginning.
A handful of minigames also spice up the gameplay, and there are also card collectibles the player may care to look through, but this game is really all about the art and the writing, not the gameplay. Your characters and all of their lines are extremely endearing and funny, and there are some laugh-out-loud lines that may have gamers recalling good lines from previous brilliant Tim Schafer projects like Grim Fandango and Psychonauts. The game’s also a treat to look at for the quick development time and low price, utilizing a cartoon style in a brilliant way in 3D, contrasting against the style of costumed characters in battle which carry some badassedness with them. That’s the draw of the game, and it’s paced out well so as not to keep gamers lingering too long between the rewarding dialogue scenes with tedious battle.
Costume Quest is guaranteed to entertain, and you’ll find the story and characters a great reward for progression through the otherwise drab and shallow RPG gameplay. A sure buy for next Halloween season, but I’m personally glad I didn’t wait anywhere near that long.
Archive
For June, 2010
Buried is a suspenseful masterpiece of minimalism that would put a smile on Hitchcock’s face. With Buried, Rodrigo Cortes proves he could very well become a force to be reckoned with. Built on such a simple (and seemingly boring at first) premise, Cortes makes Buried one of the most enthralling and captivating movies of the year. With so little to work with, it’s a wonder, as you watch entranced, how Cortes could draw so much from such a film. This is the way minimalism is supposed to be done. Buried, a suspense thriller that even Hitchcock would be proud of, is so masterfully executed by the new director that you can’t help but marvel at what transpires on the screen while, at the same time, feeling so unnerved that you can’t turn away.
Buried is the story of Paul Conroy, an American trucker working as a contractor in Iraq. After an attack on his convoy, Paul wakes to slowly realize that his is bond and trapped in a wooden coffin. Buried alive. But, aided by his Zippo and a cell phone, Paul Conroy is not ready to die. Paul must frantically organize plans for his escape. Using the cell phone, he desperately tries reaching out to the outside world in an attempt to find somebody that can help him. From the State Department to 911 to his own wife, Paul desperately scrambles to contact any resource possible in an effort to escape this would-be tomb. With his oxygen running out and the phone battery quickly dying, he sets out on a frantic race against time to free himself of his captors and escape his death.
With the entire movie taking place within the box (that’s right, no cut-away scenes at all), the audience is right there with Paul partaking in his imprisonment. You share that intense feeling of being trapped with Paul, the claustrophobic misery of it all. And as the story unfolds, trapped right there with him, you sympathize with Paul’s plight and find yourself wanting to scream out with him as attempt after attempt for rescue is in vain. That is until that last phone call. With time quickly fading away and the rescue attempt underway, that final 5 minutes is the most gripping of scenes as you’re right there with Paul, desperately needing that release as much as he does as Cortes wrings every bit of drama that he can out of this tale.
Cortes has this movie firing on so many cylinders throughout the film as well. Tackling such issues as war, terrorism, military, government and human nature, Cortes really does accomplish so much with so little. Taking the old adage “less is more” to a whole new level, Buried shows what a skillful filmmaker Cortes can be. He creates a nail-biter thriller that will most assuredly leave you on the edge of your seat, clawing at the cushions as you become so enthralled by this thriller.
Furthermore, Ryan Reynolds is at his best here. Really sucking you in as he plays the Average Joe character that is victim to the politics of war and terrorism. Fighting for his life, you become drawn in by his gripping performance that really makes you believe. That really has you feeling his desperation. You become sympathetic to his character as he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Desperately you seek relief with him as you feel you’re right there in that box alongside him as the tension is cranked up with each passing minute. Very few people have ever successfully carried a film alone like Ryan Reynolds does here (Will Smith in I Am Legend and Tom Hanks in Cast Away being a couple of the exceptions).
The expert cinematography of Eduard Grau only helps to build the claustrophobic tension of this film and leave you delightfully uncomfortable through this taut thriller. Faced with the daunting task of keeping everything inside a box, while keeping it fresh and griping, Grau’s work really contributes to the suspenseful feel of the movie and really helps to put you right there in the box with Reynolds.
Not without faults, Buried can border on getting a little “preachy” at times as Cortes criticizes war and government and illustrates his anger with all that’s wrong with the world. Also, there are times when it feels like it can drag on. Seemingly meant as a spot to give you a moment to breathe, there are moments that leave you just sitting in the box. There you see how boring the bare-bones premise of the movie is as you’re ready for Cortes and crew to get back to the gripping drama. And admittedly there are moments where it seems Cortes was a bit desperate to keep things fresh while providing thrills. For instance, a snake? Really?
Rodrigo Cortes, however, proves with Buried that he is definitely a skilled craftsman when it comes to filmmaking. He’s proven he may very well find himself up there with greats like Hitchcock before all is said and done. He’ll definitely be one that I’ll be looking out for in the future. Delivering such a nail-biting and unique experience, Buried is a definite must-see for any fans of the thriller genre. The rise and fall and re-rise of tension throughout the film will have your heart racing as your skin crawls from how eerily uncomfortable Cortes, Reynolds and Grau make this claustrophobic nightmare. Yet the whole while, you can’t tear yourself away. As I stated before, the last 5 or so minutes of this movie will literally have you clawing at your seat as the final minutes click away for Paul Conroy. All of this resulting in, quite possibly, one of the best movie endings ever.
RATING: 8/10
As a sequel to Hidden Mysteries: Civil War, the Hidden Mysteries: Buckingham Palace game presents the same hidden object type of gameplay with a puzzle adventure twist. This time around, you’re off to find information about a long lost history behind the Buckingham Palace walls, and get to learn about its rich history too while on the way.
In Hidden Mysteries: Buckingham Palace, you play as a part of the many visitors touring one of the grandest buildings in the western world. However during your visit, you chanced to stumble upon a mysterious letter concerning hidden treasures by an unknown figure known only through the initials A.M. Trying your luck, your first letter leads you to find one of the eight lost crowned jewels. And since the chain of clues look genuine indeed, you’re off to an adventure trying to collect all the rare gems, while on the way, learning much about the palace’s many secrets too.
The main gameplay is a hidden object adventure where you’re tasked to find clues on various locations inside the Buckingham Palace grounds. Items are listed on the left side of the screen and you just have to find all these items before the time is out. Setting apart from usual hidden object games though, you’re also to find critical clues to further enhance the game’s storyline. These clues, when found, will pop out on a different window, be put into your inventory, and will be used later on the puzzle quests of the game.
After reaching the end of each act, you’re off to solve a puzzle in order to find one of the missing crowned jewels. All of your gathered inventory equipment is to be used or combined to solve the puzzles, but you’ll have to rely on clever thinking too in cracking most of them out. Furthermore, if you think that you can no longer find a way forward on a puzzle, a solve button is conveniently placed in your menu for skipping the game and go towards continuing your adventure.