Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom Review

Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom is a third person adventure game set in a magical land about a jester and his girlfriend. It is a quaint story that’s told throughout each level, and you will really get to care for the characters as you play through. It’s not a game that takes itself very seriously though, Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom is very proud to be a comedy adventure full of humour and comic book stylings.

Masquerade: The baubles of Doom feels very old school in its roots but it works very well as a modern-day game. It feels like any 3D platform game from the era of PS1 when 3D platformers were just getting established. It plays out very nicely, with simple controls and fun combat. The movement can sometimes be a bit jerky though but it’s not enough to hinder your game play in any way.

The main aim of the game is to work your way through each level, defeating all of the enemies. Your girlfriend has been kidnapped and it is up to you to find her and bring her back, but an army of clowns (literally an army of clowns) stands in your way, and did you know clowns don’t like jesters apparently? With a set of different skills up your sleeve and powerups to use sparingly, you face group after group of enemies to kill single-handed. The combat is fun and frentic but be aware, this game gets very hard when you play at the higher difficulty (as I sillily was all in the name of getting achievements!) There is an Easy, Medium and Hard difficulty to choose from though so there is something to suit everyone. The difficulty affects how easy enemies are to damage, so on Easy mode this game becomes a much more casual affair and would be much more fun for younger players.

Don’t be fooled into thinking Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom is just a brawler though. There are a lot of platforming classics in here too so be expecting to do a lot of jumping through obstacle courses and solving simple puzzles. The jumping can get a bit annoying at times as sometimes the button does not react causing you to fall to your death. As long as you have patience though it is rewarding in the end.

The art style of Masquerade is really nice. Although the graphics are not exactly Quantum Break quality the art style is quite unique with a nice comic book hand drawn feel to it. Everything looks very cartoonish and pleasant, filled with bright colours. During combat you even get pop-up speech bubbles with the likes of “Whack!” and “Thud!” to add to the comic book charm. It’s nice.

Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom isn’t the longest game in the world and once you’ve completed it you’ll probably not have much reason to go back, unless you want to 100% each level (there are hidden objects to collect along the way). But for what it is, the length is perfectly great and the value for money on offer is perfect. If you miss having a good old school 3D platformer to play then I would highly recommend Masqerade. It looks good, it’s got a good soundtrack, and its fun to play apart from a few minor problems with the controls but they are easily overlooked.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.