Editorials
‘Costume Quest’ is the Most Wholesome Halloween Game You Can Play
Reflecting on what Halloween was like as a child instantly conjures up so many distinct images: the crisp Autumn air, the rustling of the leaves, jack o’ lanterns lighting up the front porch, and kids scurrying around the streets in imaginative costumes. There’s such a possibility to the day, allowing you to dress up as whatever you want to represent your true self. Everything is riding the line between being a family-friendly version of spooky and legitimately scary. Few games capture this feeling as well as Double Fine’s ode to the JRPG, Costume Quest, which came out in October of 2010 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
Costume Quest was born out of one of Double Fine’s Amnesia Fortnight game jams during the development of Brutal Legend. During Amnesia Fortnight, Double Fine would set aside their current project and split into teams that to create game prototypes for reviewed by the team as a whole. Costume Quest was one of these prototypes, and it was put into production and completed by Double Fine in under a year.
The game casts you as one of a pair of twins, Reynolds or Wren, who are heading out on Halloween night to trick or treat in their new neighborhood. Whichever one you pick is dressed in a robot costume, while the other is wearing a candy corn outfit. This costume makes them a target for a real-life, hungry monster called Grubbins, who kidnaps them, forcing you to put together a party of neighborhood kids to pull off a rescue mission before curfew.
The core conceit that the game is built around is the use of a variety of Halloween costumes that are collected throughout the game. These cleverly act as the classes and are not tied to a specific member of your three-person party. While exploring, costumes appear as they would in real life, but once the battle starts, the corny cardboard boxes transform into an epic robot. Each costume not only has a specific ability in combat, but also has an exploration ability for navigating the game’s levels. Costumes range from classics like a vampire or unicorn to oddballs like french fries and the Statue of Liberty. This mechanic perfectly captures the spirit of Halloween: you dress up as something else and embody it throughout the evening.
Each of the game’s areas is gated with the most Halloween-themed mechanic possible: trick or treating. You need to go from house to house and knock on doors, never sure if it will be answered by a clueless adult handing you candy or a monstrous Grubbin ready for battle. This is a brilliant way to thematically handle the random battles that JRPGs are known for, transitioning the classic holiday tradition into gameplay seamlessly. Forcing you to trick or treat at all houses also gives you an easy reason to explore the game’s world, which presents you with exploration puzzles that often block your progress until you find certain items or costumes.
While the game gels perfectly thematically, the gameplay isn’t always the strongest. Mechanically, the game is very simple, particularly when it comes to battles. There are timing-based button pushes that can add extra oomph to your attacks or give your defense a slight boost, but other than that it’s just doing a normal attack until you power up your special move. Aside from the changing of the costumes, there are Battle Stamps that can be collected to give you different buffs during fights, but other than that it’s very basic stuff. Fortunately, the game is relatively short, particularly compared to other entries in the JRPG genre, ensuring that its charm will keep you interested before it wears out its welcome.
This charm makes it easy to see why this was the first Double Fine game ever to get a sequel. The concept and world that Costume Quest set up is very easy to expand upon with new costumes and locations. The sequel even tweaked some elements of the combat a bit to make it more interesting, though still not as deep as other JRPGs. While it didn’t seem to garner as much attention as the original, but it was still a worthy addition to the franchise.
I say franchise because the Costume Quest brand has successfully made its way into other mediums as well. In 2014, Zac Gorman wrote and drew Invasion of the Candy Snatchers, an original graphic novel set in the Costume Quest universe that follows a trio of young Grubbins who sneak into the human world on Halloween night to steal candy to impress the popular kids. It’s a fun role reversal that finds a unique angle on the property, featuring great art and fun writing. This year, Amazon Prime adapted Costume Quest into an animated show that takes the concept and adds a bit more mythology around the origin of these transforming costumes.
Most people who love Halloween use it as a great excuse to revisit media that reminds them why they love the holiday, and Costume Quest is perfectly built to be revisited. It’s simple battle mechanics make it a smooth replay that doesn’t provide much resistance, and its six-hour runtime makes it easy to fit into even the busiest video game schedule. These factors also make it a great game to introduce to children, so if you’re looking for something to get your kid in the mood for trick or treating, or want to keep the spirit alive after the holiday has passed, Costume Quest is the perfect family-friendly option.
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
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