Review for DLC Quest on PC

It's not like you find a game that pokes fun of the games industry everyday of the week. And over the last 10 years or so, the gaming scene has changed a fair bit; micro-transactions, faux money, freemium gaming, etc... But if there's something that gamers get a little annoyed with is DLC, downloadable content. So what's better than making a game that pokes the idea of DLC! Well that's DLC Quest for you! Now before you put your knickers in a twist, and/or grunt in disgust, you only have to pay for this game once, the level of satire in this game is quite high, and a lot of it is very faux indeed...

The game's story, if you even call it a story, I mean come on how many times do we hear this? At least it happens in every Mario game right? lol! But the Princess, to whom you're going to wed get's kidnapped by "Bad Guy", no I'm not making this up. And it's you're role to save the Princess from Badguy. But there's a catch, you start off only being able to move left, you don't animate, can't jump and you can't pause. You you can do is move right, and that's it! Whilst moving to the right you collect a few coins until you come across a man that sells things to you. The game's DLC.

This is where you find that the DLC you buy in the game isn't actually real money, but the coins you collect in the game. In essence, the game is pretty much a Wonder Boy/Monster Land clone, where by the shops are made to look as if you're playing a game on the iPad or Android where to progress quicker you have to pay with real money. The game itself is simply a spoof about modern gaming whilst looking like a Wonder Boy game with an 8/16 bit graphical look.

Oh yes, there's horse armour in the game! But I'm not going to tell you what it does! heh!

This game was originally released on the XBox 360 Indie games section of the Live Arcade, and now it's released on Steam through their Green Light scheme. Which is always a good thing, I do appreciate Steam's love for independent games development. But how does a game that was made on the 360 work on a PC? Well, the game does have full controller support, but using the keyboard isn't bad either. After all there's only four keys that you use once you unlock everything. Left and Right is controlled with the cursor keys, whilst Jump uses the Z key, and attacking and talking uses the X key. In menu you might have to use the Up, Down and space key, but you hardly use those in gameplay; so the game is very keyboard friendly for such a console-centric game.

The only real downside to this game is it's difficulty and ease to beat. I was able to beat the game the first time in about 20 minutes, and I got the best ending in about 25 minutes. But then I have to remember that this game did cost me less than £2 and it's more of a games industry gag than a full blown game. But regardless of it's lack of difficulty, it's still a pretty good game with laughs on the way, especially if you're like me who keeps an eye on gaming news a lot. What good about the Steam Edition of the game is that it comes with it's sequel, DLC Quest: Freemium or Die, which I have yet to play yet, but it looks promising as it looks like it has a lot more to it than it's first game. What would have been nice is to add enemies in the game that can actually harm you, yup, there's no really enemies in the game apart from a huge troll that blocks your way and Badguy. You can unlock a zombie monster pack, but they don't really harm you, but you can mow them down with the gun you earn later in the game. It would've been nice if these zombies that you pay with in-game money would attack you; or maybe it's the developer trying to say that modern games are too easy.

So, should you get DLC Quest? If you're a gamer who's been playing games for a long time, yes. It jabs jokes into the rib cage of the modern gaming industry. It would've been nice if there was some actual challenge to the game, but then again it might be better to treat this game as if it's a piece of art to display how pathetic the modern day gaming scene is with it's downloadable content and micro-transactions. It's simply worth having just to remind us that gaming back in the day was a little better than what it is now.