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System:
GameBoy Color
Genre:
RPG
Publisher:
Electro Source
Developer:
-
Players:
-
Release date/year:
01-24-2000
Other systems:
-
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- Quest: Brian's Journey
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2000 Electro Source - GBC
CEO: Test results are in, and I’m afraid there’s some bad news regarding Quest: Brian’s Journey.
Designer: What is it, sir?
CEO: Apparently, from the looks of these beta results, Brian’s Journey is both too fun and too intelligent. I need you to dumb it down and dull it up, pronto.
Designer: I’m on it, sir!
What you just read is my personal theory in dialogue format of the origin of Quest: Brian’s Journey. It just beat out my other theory, the one that states the creative staff of this game was allergic to intelligence.
For those of you who have never heard of the Quest gaming series (and trust me, I envy you), let me give you the scoop on them. The Quest games are action-RPGs/cheap Zelda clones. They generally star a smarmy little dork with a Little Rascals-esque cowlick by the name of Brian. The games revolve around Brian meandering aimlessly through wooded areas, bashing the **** out of random animals who may or may not be enemies with his absurdly large staff. Needless to say, the series is a Master Swords short of a Zelda game.
So drop your pants, close your eyes, and think of Christmas, fancy boys. Its time to delve into the world of Quest: Brian’s Journey.....
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Gameplay - 3/10:
Like I said, Brian’s Quest plays like Zelda, though now that I think about it, its actually alot more like the original Final Fantasy.
You view the game from a semi-overhead position. There aren’t any weapons or armor to make Brian any stronger, so you’ll have to suffer it out with his patheticness for the whole game. And to top it all off, he can only walk horizontally or vertically. Apparently, whatever species of idiot Brian is hasn’t learned to concept of walking diagonally.
Brian is slow, so basically doing anything in Brian’s Quest requires a lot of patience and a big bottle of bathtub gin. The towns, for the most part, are exactly the same, with a different color ground in each one. Dungeons are elaborate mazes, but let’s face it: When you character moves about as slow as a one-legged marathon runner, they get tedious the moment you enter them.
And the battles! I honestly don’t think I’ve been in battle so horribly boring and dull in all my life. The battle field is a giant square of landscape. Brian is encased in a smaller square, in which he can freely move around. The enemies are on other parts of the screen, and thus, you have two options to attack them with. The first is using your gigantic staff to crush their skulls with. Unfortunately, Brian has the strength of a baby kitten, making these blows almost pleasurable to the enemy. The second thing Brian can do is magic. You mix and match the elements of Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water to create “powerful” spells. Really, though, for an “action-RPG”, there isn’t a very effective way to avoid getting your ass handed to you by every troll, evil bubble, and crazy old man in the game, save for running away.
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Storyline - 3/10:
The story starts off promising enough. You play as Brian, dork of the monastery (okay, that’s an assumption). One day, a fellow monk named Lavaar steals one of the temples secret books of ..... secrets. After Brian’s father Bart goes MIA after searching for Lavaar, the “Grand Abbot” summons Brian to go and find them both.
Fair enough, right? Its kinda cliche, but it would have done. However, soon into the game, the fact that you’re searching for Lavaar and your father quickly become overwhelmed in the fifty thousand other tasks you’re assigned to do. “Find the Princess!” “Retrieve the treasure from the mine!” “Battle me!” “Battle me ..... AGAIN!” Good God, Brian is less a of a warrior and more of a servant girl. By the end of Brian’s Quest, Brian is an exotic dancer in Guam who sells his body to buy Kool-Aid just so he can get his daily fix of flavored sugar-water.
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Graphics - 2/10:
In all honesty, this game is blander than the wallpaper in any given nursing home. The colors are dingy. The same sprites are recycled throughout the game. Brian is an irritating geek and its horrible to have to look at him for the length of the journey. Really, the only thing that doesn’t look like **** are the magic spells, but even those get old when it becomes obvious that Rock Lvl. 3 is just Rock Lvl. 1, except with a larger rock.
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Sound Effects/Music - 1/10:
BAAAAAAAAHG! Sha-DOOPDOOP! Walla-walla-walla-BeeP! FRAZARAZAFAR! Durrrrrrrrrf....... Sadly, those are the lyrics to the opening theme.
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Difficulty - 2/10:
Considering the fact that you have the option to run away from nearly every battle without getting hit, the only hard thing about Brian’s Quest is not marching down to the Wal-Mart you bought it from and beating the salesperson who talked you into buying it unconscious with one of their “Watch for Falling Prices” signs.
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Fun Factor - 1/10:
The only thing that could have saved this game from the ****ty Game Hall of Fame would have been the battles. However, the innovative magic system gets old quickly when you realize that 95% of the spells you concoct will be weaker than a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
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Brian’s Quest‘s creamy nougat filling:
Gameplay - 3/10
Storyline - 3/10
Graphics - 2/10
Sound Effects/Music - 1/10
Difficulty - 2/10
Fun Factor - 1/10
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Should I buy/rent Quest: Brian’s Journey for the GameBoy?
If you’ve ever wanted to bust open a GameBoy cartridge to see what the inside was like, this game is definitely the one to do it to.
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Why the Hell does Brian have a stupid ass cowlick?
The same reason Cameron Diaz did in that movie “There’s Something About Mary”. Ewwww ......
When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, Brian’s Quest could have been a good game had it been put into the right hands. Its just too bad that they decided to give it to a company who’s staff is comprised mainly of Special Olympic gold medallists
3/10
//HighwayMonkey
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