Costume Quest

The Good
One thing Double Fine has managed to consistently nail are aesthetics. From Psychonauts to Brütal Legend they are known for creating both visually impressive and unique worlds. They also manage to write excellent, and humorous, dialogue for their games, something everyone else is still having a hard time pulling off. Costume Quest has both in spades (minus the usual high-quality voicework due to the downloadable nature of the game).

The environments of the game have a visual flair somewhere between The Wind Waker and a 1940s magazine ad. There isn't much of it to look at, sadly, but it all looks great. The writing also brings life to a well-worn cliché (sibling saves sibling from danger, restores family kinship) as good writing is supposed to. If Costume Quest had been anything other than a game then it would start showing up on the same nostalgia lists as Secret of NIMH or Scott Pilgrim, albeit somewhere in the low-to-mid range.

The Bad
Unfortunately Costume Quest isn't a movie or a comic book, it is a game, and not much of one at that. Saying that the game's beauty is skin deep is an insult to bones. Costume Quest is only skin. It is a funny comic strip pinned to an empty cork board. It's a sports car in a cargo container at the bottom of an ocean. It's an illustrated novel that's been sent back in time to before the invention of language.

From a description of the game you might think that Costume Quest is an adventure game, owing to the ability to use the different costume abilities to bypass obstacles, or an RPG, as it is a "quest". You'd be wrong twice, but that's not your fault because the pre-release information on the game certainly tried to paint it as both. Tim Schafer demoed one quest in the game where the player had to put together a specific costume to get invited to an exclusive party. As it turns out this is the only time in the entire game such a section shows up, every other quest in the game is solved by walking around until you've beaten up enough monsters or picked up enough items.

The "RPG" part of the game is nearly non-existent as well. In combat each costume has a normal and a special attack. A normal attack is a short, painless QTE; succeed to deal damage, fail to do slightly less damage. Every three turns a special attack can be used to either deal more damage or to heal an ally, depending on the costume. The "Battle Stamps" do offer the possibility of adding one or two more attacks if equipped, but you're better off just equipping the ones that make the characters slightly better at what they already do.

Costume Quest's battle system is, bar none, the laziest implementation of any combat system. It's part of the game only because they had no better ideas for what to replace it with. The costume system itself, on the other hand, could have worked if they'd put a bit more effort into it. Each costume is made up of three everyday household materials that, with a little effort and imagination, turn into an awesome robot or ninja. The problem is that each of the three costume components is found in an inexplicably appearing treasure chest, or just handed out by a random adult, so they might as well just reward you money for completing quests so you can go to the Wal Mart and buy a prefab costume.

The Bottom Line
I want to like Double Fine games. I want them to be a revival of the kind of originality and production values that pervaded golden age LucasArts games. The problem is that they just can't make games. Psychonauts was amazing writing, art, and animation attached to a bland by-the-numbers platformer. Brütal Legend was amazing writing, art, and animation attached to an RTS they (rightly) thought no one would buy so they pretended with all their might that it was a Legend of Zelda style adventure. Now we have Costume Quest, which is really good writing, art, and animation attached to nothing else.

If they moved on to animated movies or comic books then Double Fine could start producing something I'd be able to recommend without needing a 'but ignore the gameplay' caveat. Maybe the reason they are still making games is because they've pretty much cornered the market on style over substance, but they've had their chances and it is time to throw in the towel.