Quest: Fantasy Challenge

"It's only fun if you enjoy flaws in games..."

This game taught me a lesson: don't judge a game by its box art. The art on Quest Fantasy Challenge depicts a young man blasting creatures with magic from his wand, while other creatures sneak up behind him, planning to attack. Doesn't sound bad, right? No, but it IS! IT IS!

Quest Fantasy Challenge is a terrible game that you will play for about 5 minutes at the most, then completely forget about it. It's plagued by flaws in almost every category, and you definitely won't have a good time. At least I didn't.

In QFC, you play as the guy on the box that must wander around small arenas (''stages'') collecting the red crystals scattered throughout what appears to be colored dirt or something. A variety of enemies, one type for each stage, will chase you around, and you must run as fast as you can (which is actually very slow) in order to escape. Touching one loses you a life, and you'll definitely do so during the course of the game, since your character is so freakin' slow. But have no fear! In order to defend your poor self, you can press the A or B button to shoot what appears to be a circle out of your wand. Hit your target, and it will disappear, earning you points. But OH NO! There's more coming! You'll just have to keep running from them until your circle comes back to your wand from offscreen. No matter how many enemies you destroy, it won't be any use. Just like a certain other game (*cough* GAUNTLET *cough*) new enemies will continue to flow out from a generator located in the center of the screen. Unlike Gauntlet, the one in QFC can't be destroyed and the flow can only be delayed by collecting the piece of food that occasionally appears there. When you do this, a frog that spits fire will come onscreen and try to hurt you. If you can manage to put yourself through 5 stages, you'll be able to fight a much faster ''boss'' that will chase you around the screen, leading to your death. Also, if you take the time to venture offpath, you can open treasure chests! EXCITING! If the chest actually contains something, which is the case about 1/4 of the time, you can collect the item (although it doesn't seem to have any effect on the game) and continue collecting your crystals while shooting your magical circles at your enemies like crazy!

SOMEONE, MAKE IT STOP!

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Graphics:
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Graphics? HA! The lack of creativity in this game makes it seem like you're in the same area in each stage. Enemies all look the same and the only real changes in each level is the color of the ''dirt'' that you must dig through to get the crystals. There are (literally) only 5 different visuals in each stage:

1) Your character
2) The enemy
3) The ''dirt''
4) The crystal
5) The treasure chests

There's definitely nothing special here.
Score: 3/10

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Sound:
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I didn't have much of a problem with the audio in this game, but I didn't enjoy it much either. The background music wasn't breathtaking, and neither were the sound effects. A bad feature that was put into the game was in the options screen. The option to listen to the background music and different sound effects. Believe it or not, there are only 16 different sound effects, and 11 different tracks in the background (and that includes the title screen, the short music when you die, and the 1-second intro tone at the beginning of the stage). Nothing special here either, but there could have been a lot more work put into this category.
Score: 5/10

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Control:
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This is where the game goes all wrong. The system is basic: use the directional arrows to move your character, and press A or B to fire your circles. But no matter how basic it is, actually executing the actions during the games is extremely frustrating and you'll end up throwing your Game Boy across the room if you don't control yourself. Your character moves so slow, it's as if he's in slow motion, while your enemies are running towards you at normal speed. Digging through the ''dirt'' where the crystals are slows you down even more, if that's possible at all. If an enemy is chasing you, turning your character in a certain direction to face them is challenging too. It takes forever, and you'll feel like you can't do anything about it. The control is what really brings this game down.
Score: 1/10

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Gameplay:
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If you even have the patience to play this game, you'll hate it. It's just boring, and it manages to be frustrating at the same time too! See the above sections for more elaboration...
Score: 2/10

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Buy or Rent?
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None of the above. It's not worth it. If it was free, probably not either.

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Overall:
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Quest Fantasy Challenge struggles to do good, but it fails in every way. Whether it's the below-average graphics, the mediocre sound, or the horrible controls, you'll dislike this game, without a doubt.

OVERALL SCORE: 2/10

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/02, Updated 12/18/02