Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom (PC) Review

Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom might label itself as an action adventure title, but such a moniker would probably be more fitting if there was adventuring to be done. As Jaxx moves linearly from one clown rodeo to the next, there's not much to do along the way except bash in more bright, shiny red noses. Most encounters can be cleared by mashing the attack button, only stopping to counter when the relevant icon appears above a foe's head. All things considered, it's the least offensive part of the gameplay.

At the very least, the combat is mostly functional. Aside from attacking and countering, Jaxx is also capable of dodging, tossing his hammer, and executing a special move after building up strength for a while. While the special moves have some niche uses in boss battles and in clearing small groups of enemies, the dodge is too awkward to use reliably, and the hammer throw is so situational that it's never extremely relevant at any point after its introduction.

As such, the combat grows stale extremely fast. While there are more diverse enemy types to fight as the game progresses along its various acts, they aren't different enough to provide any meaningful depth to the combat. Instead, each chapter is content to obstruct the way forward with bigger and bigger swarms of foes, making for hectic brawls.

While the action isn't exactly awful in smaller encounters, it really begins to break down as the enemy encounters increase in size. The camera itself doesn't deal with large groups and tight spaces well, making dealing with the threats around Jaxx difficult. Responding to attacks also becomes meaningless when six or eight foes are swarming Jaxx at once, and the dodge move is so precise in implementation that it's absolutely useless in the thick of combat.

This is frustrating especially given the combo system, which rewards a better score on each stage (albeit arbitrarily and lumped in with several other factors), as any failure in dodging or keeping up hits on the enemy results in the combo resetting. While it definitely takes a page from the Batman: Arkham games of the last two console generations, it's not quite as fluid in its execution.

Along with the frequent encounters, there are a few basic puzzles, and some incredibly ill-conceived platforming sections. Jaxx's jump is stiff and awkward, and the platforming sections feel like a way to simply break up the action with incredibly annoying timed jump challenges. While they aren't difficult exactly, the sections are touchy and the camera pans out nauseatingly during certain jumps. They're the most annoying section in the game, and that's really saying something. Each fall sends Jaxx right to the beginning of each section, spouting a quip and an unskippable animation each time.

While Jaxx himself is far from being insufferable, he's not exactly likable, either. He's got plenty of cracks at clowns, but they're honestly just not that funny. All the humour leans on the extreme, edgy end of juvenile, and most of the comedy really just falls flat. It's very slapstick, very jocular humour, and when it's interspersed throughout each encounter, each unskippable cut-scene, it really starts to border on becoming unbearable.

Everything about the experience is forgettable at best and eye-rollingly bad at its worst. The plot is entirely forgettable, and any semblance of coherence is lost between the introductory exposition and the main storyline. There's a fair amount of character backstory that's just frankly not worth exploring. The characters so one-dimensional (ranging from bland to more than slightly sexist) that they really wouldn't offer much to the overall narrative, assuming there was one.