DLC Review: This product requires Costume Quest to be installed in order to be used.
Costume Quest offered a simple but fun RPG for kids, and with its theme of turning costumes into a means of fighting candy-stealing monsters one shouldn’t be too surprised that they’re offering add-ons for the game that give you new areas to explore and new costumes to use. Grubbins on Ice is the first (and probably not the last; the game hints at there being plans for more later on), reuniting much of the original cast for a trek into Repugia itself to track down Lucy, who is abducted at the start of the story. As the $5 USD/400 Microsoft Point cost might suggest, you don’t get to explore all of Repugia... just a portion of it about equal in size to any one section/chapter of the original game, but even that is reasonably fun.
Aside from the first few minutes, Grubbins on Ice is pretty standard Costume Quest fare. You have to explore the area, find material for new costumes (more on those later), collect candy to buy new battle stamps with, fight monsters, visit houses, and use costume abilities to solve a few basic puzzles. You’ve seen this all before in the regular game, and while some activities have been given a face-lift they still play the same. You’re still ’trick or treating’ at houses albeit for a different reason, and the old bobbing for apples mini-game has been ’replaced’ by bobbing for candy that looks like giant, cartoon-style eyeballs. Even the battle stamps mostly cover old ground, carrying the effects of previous stamps to new extremes but not offering any sort of innovation.
Thus the real stars of Grubbins on Ice are the new costumes: An Eyeball, Yeti, and Pirate. The Eyeball’s main value is to let you see larger parts of the map at a time, making it easier to find secrets... but the Yeti and Pirate are much more exciting. The Yeti is a great defensive costume, able to mitigate a lot of damage against the entire party for a short time, while the pirate is a straight-forward attacker with powerful sword strikes and the ability to call in a cannon volley from his pirate ship. Also, he’s a skeleton and looks really, really cool; the pirate is easily the most enjoyable part of this DLC pack.
Ultimately, Grubbins on Ice is more of the same, and that’s both good and bad. You’re doing the exact same things here that you were in the original game, and this section of Repugia will only keep players occupied for a couple hours at most. Grubbins on Ice is mostly getting by on how solid its game mechanics and presentation are, and they still hold up well. If the basic Costume Quest formula still entertains you, then getting a new area to play in and some cool new costumes may well be worth the price of admission.
