Halloween Bash

I wasn't sure if I should review a game that beat me in the Halloween contest, so I let the stench of defeat wash from my body for a few weeks and felt that I could go about this objectively. Since this was a sequel to Halloween Flop, I figured the best way to approach this was to go back and play that before I wrote this review, and it gave me a nice perspective on this one. So, let me start with this:

If you liked Halloween Flop, Halloween Bash is better in every way, so just play it.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get into the details:

Story
My background is in writing, so this is the category I like to start with--it's also the category I'm going to be the most critical over, so let's peel this band-aid off. Bash begins with the death of the protagonist, who happens to be a five-year-old girl. This was a gripping way to begin the game, and it established a serious tone that set me up for mature themes. However, the game quickly switches the tone from serious to zany. This is basically the tone of Flop, and playing that made the tone of this game make more sense. The tone still felt uneven, though, but I can understand if the developers were trying to create some emotional impact to make the plot have more weight. Unfortunately, though, the characters were too one-dimensional to make it work: Bobby is a frightened child (and, sometimes, her character breaks voice and she sounds like an adult), Dee is intelligent (almost to the point of being a know-it-all), and Eddy is defined by his love for Dee. All this is to say, Bash begins with adult subject matter but turns into a Saturday morning cartoon. Though, considering some of the references, that's probably what it aspired to be.

The story progresses through dialogue before and after battles that are placed at choke points on the map, just like Flop. The basic impetus of the plot--you're in Dee's mansion, clearing out baddies that are hanging out there--doesn't really matter enough to pull you through. Kids and young adults will probably find some of the dialogue exchanges to be funny, but old dinosaurs like me won't get much out of them. If this franchise were to continue, I'd like to see more detail put into storytelling through images and actions rather than just through dialogue. The opening scene was effective because it let the images do the talking; every other scene tends to just be characters standing in place talking, which is a big missed opportunity since video games are a visual medium. Overall, though, the storytelling is definitely heading in a better direction than Flop, even if all the notes didn't hit.

Graphics
The graphics are the same stripped down, Gameboy-esque affair that was present in Halloween Flop. Like its predecessor, Bash makes this work, and the character portraits are what really bring everything to life. I found this game to be a lot more detailed than Flop: the maps look much cleaner, the character portraits are slick, and sprites were present for all of the minor characters instead of just the "leader" of enemy groups. There's not much else to say--it's a pretty game.

Music
The music was a lateral step from the first game. Each battle has its own theme, and the music choices tend to be jokey. For example, one of the first battles is with a lion (who's cowardly), a zombie (without a brain), and a sentient suit of armor (we'll just call him a tin man), and the battle music is the cheesiest MIDI version of "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" that you've ever heard. This was the same tactic that Flop used, and it works.

Gameplay
The core gameplay is quite a bit similar to Flop: walk around, fight battles, reach the boss. However, there have been a lot of improvements. For one, although there is a linear path through the game, there are more optional battles than Flop. What makes this really work is that Bash has a way better sense of progression. In Flop, characters didn't really change other than completing the three bonus battles and getting each character one more move. In Bash, most of the characters' skill sets are locked at the beginning, and each battle gives the player the option to free the next skill in the character's skill tree of their choice (I say it's a tree, but it's really just the trunk: you have to unlock the skills in order for each character). This gives a natural sense of progression to the game, and the bit of control it gives the player feels good.

There is a slight progression in stats, though the only thing you can boost is the "mana" source for each character (mp for Eddy, bp for Dee, and hp for Bobby). To get these stats, you have to search everything, as you might just find some extra mp in a trash can. Like skills, you choose who you want to give the stat bonus too. If this were a longer game, all this searching could have been tedious, but I didn't feel that inconvenienced by it. By the end, you can crank everyone up all the way, so the choices impacted short-term gameplay rather than long-term, but it still felt nice, and after cranking Bobby from "completely worthless" to "greatest support character of all time," I felt like I'd achieved something. Once I cranked Eddy up all the way, I felt unstoppable.

I guess that's a good segue into the difficulty: I died on the first battle a few times, but then I did the optional battles and didn't have any further trouble. The game didn't feel difficult, and I tended to use more or less one strategy, but I had to alter it slightly when faced with different enemy configurations. Since the optional battles crank up your characters, this opens the game up to challenge runs, which could make the game quite hard.

When it comes to the actual battles themselves, this was about the same as Flop, with the rock, paper, scissors trio of attributes, though the developers played with the battles a bit more. Overall, I found the gameplay to be about equally engaging as with Flop, but the sense of progression I felt in Bash was a great improvement.

Summary
Halloween Bash is a nice improvement from its predecessor, and it will give you a nice hour of battles, plenty of eye candy, and the right kind of person will get some laughs out of this.