DLC Quest (and Live Freemium or Die) Review

     With an increasing number of companies offering DLC content to pad out what used to be complete games, DLC Quest satirizes this trend to great effect.
     At the beginning of the game, you have no character animations, and can only move right.  No jumping or moving left.  You slide to the right, collect a few coins, and run into a vendor that sells you the ability to go left, which in turn will get you the extra coins to purchase the ability to jump.  Something that should've been naturally included in the initial cost, but wasn't.

Even characters are a commentary.

     The whole game progresses in this fashion.  Unlocking all the components that were once standard gaming fare, are now being sold to us under the term microtransactions.  For the few dollars to purchase DLC Quest, you'll receive plenty of amusement in it's hour or so play time.  There's lot's of hilarious commentary relating to breaking up a game into pieces that can be then "unlocked" for a fee.  Luckily for us all the fees here are spent with in-game money.  Filling the game with unecessary quests and useless junk- be it characters or unlockable content- I had a strange desire to collect it all.  An odd feeling for a game to show me how absurd my own gaming habits and desires were.  The whole of the game and expansion is a perfect example of how our wants can be exploited for money.

     I even laughed about the "Awardments" (Achievements) that were unlocked.  All made to poke fun at the games we love to play, but in a way that also makes us giggle.

     It's sad to say, but this could easily be something plausible for companies to actually try in the near future.  It isn't too difficult to envision as some of this happens already- in DLC Quest you can purchase plenty of useless in-game items such as a pet fish that appears in a bowl on a pedastal and stays there forever doing nothing and never responding to you, as well as armor you can buy for your horse.  A horse, I might add, that is just as useless as your fish- because you never use the horse.

     For $5 both DLC Quest and it's expansion Live Freemium or Die are worth the money.  More so than many other games just for the self-referencing humor.  I can only hope this game will give us pause to truly consider how gaming is changing (has changed?) while still remaining a piece of entertainment.