GAMES Review: Gravity Falls: Pinesquest

Hmm… didn’t think I’d review a sequel to an online game but there yah go. Yes, Pinesquest: The Final Quest of Legend XII is a sequel to the second game I ever reviewed on Bubble Blabber, Rumble’s Revenge. For a brief recap of my thoughts on the game, it was a first class side scrolling beat ‘em up, with excellent writing; a great aesthetic and a fluent and accessible control scheme albeit with a slightly obtuse weapon pick up system that added RPG elements where it wasn’t necessary. But can Pinesquest step up and be an even better second act? Well let’s first talk about the contextual story and find out.

If you beat Rumble’s Revenge you would remember that Dipper and Mabel for some reason ended up stuck in the video game world with no way out. That is until they realize that someone programmed the game to trap them, but who? The programmer of course and now in their new Zelda-esque low res style they must fight through gnomes, manotaurs and gremlobins to discover who the programmer really is and escape this pixelated nightmare. Already like Rumble’s Revenge, Pinesquest has a beautiful aesthetic that mirrors the show fantastically. From the newly pixelated design of all the key locations from the show (The Mystery Shack the Mancaves, and etc.) and the catchy 8-bit background music, it just oozes the Gravity Falls Charm.

But enough about the aesthetics time for the gameplay. Like I said before Pinesquest is a top down Zelda-esque RPG, like Zelda Link’s Awakening or Zelda: Four Swords, where you play as Dipper and Mabel walking through the Pixel version of Gravity Falls. Throughout your journey you will pick up the four key items the camera, the spear, Mabel’s Grappling hook, and the shrinking flashlight, which are all used with the ‘X’ key. The camera is used to primarily take pics of key landmarks in the game and the monsters, but it has a second function of stunning and later in the game freezing the enemies. Taking pictures of those landmarks and monsters has the benefit of filling your in game scrapbook and also earning money to spend at the Mystery Shack for upgrades.

The Spear is the primary attack weapon, press ‘X’, and if it hits the enemy it’s stunned and if you’re farther away from the monster then it creates a hole, which the gnomes and manotaurs will fall to their deaths in. Next Mabel’s grappling hook is used to break far away boulders, and collecting treasure that is way out of your reach. Finally the Shrinking Flashlight… shrinks stuff, mainly the Gremlobins seeing as they can’t be dropped down any of your holes seeing as they’re too big.

All the weapons function perfectly and switching between the four is a breeze. Press the space bar and that brings up your inventory, select what you need and click ‘X,’ then click space again and you’re back in the game. Truthfully at first I felt this process was a bit tedious, as I felt just orientating the four weapons to four other keys would have flowed better with the gameplay rather then stopping the game every 10 to 15 seconds to switch out items. But also truthfully after a while the pause system flows marvellously with gameplay, probably because by some point it just becomes an instinct and not a bother in the least.

The only other items in the game, that aren’t upgrades, are the Strength Amulet and the Magic Amulet. As you progress through the game taking pictures, making monsters fall down holes and such both of the bars for the amulets will increase resulting in new perks. For strength with each level you gain you can break even stronger rocks, which usually have more expensive treasure hidden underneath. For magic if you fill the bar completely you get to float which will allow you to reach the final stage and to hidden areas. The strength amulet also has a second function when used you perform this super attack with Dipper and Mabel. The problem with this is that in the game it’s not explained well how to use this power. I found out about it by accident. But overall Amulets included all the gameplay mechanics work great.

Now seeing, as this is a web based RPG you wouldn’t think there would be any sidequests, but you and I would be wrong. Pinsequest has a fair amount of side quests, all the regular overworld side quests are run by Soos and Wendy which are mostly just variations of collect X number of things, and there is the hidden Easter egg side quest where if you collect all the Bills at the end of the game you get a secret message. While the regular sidequests from Soos and Wendy don’t really add much replayability to the game, the Bill sidequest has me wanting to play again so I can find all the bills. Gravity Falls is just top notch when it comes to its hidden messages and Easter eggs so I’m just excited to see what the message is.

To round up, Pinesquest is a great game with a lot of fun content for a web based RPG. On my first playthrough it took me an hour and a half to complete the game. That’s definitely one of the longest playthroughs I have done for a web-based game and I loved every minute of it. If you’re into RPGs and like the style of Zelda: Link’s awakening then definitely give this a play.