Chex Quest HD

Genre: First-Person Shooter

Players: 1-4 Co-Op / Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

.

Review:

Chex Quest is a First-Person Shooter originally released on PC in 1996 as a cereal box prize included with boxes of Chex-brand cereal. No, seriously. The original game was a mod of Ultimate Doom that completely stripped away any semblance of violence and reimagined the game into a story about various anthropomorphic food-people beset by an invasion of green slime creatures. Over the years, the promotional game gained a cult following, leading to multiple sequels, and eventually the original game was remade for PC in 2020, with a port of the game coming to Nintendo Switch in 2022.

Probably one of the biggest parts of this game’s cult appeal has to be its odd presentation, the absurdly over-the-top pandering to brand, with Chex’s name plastered everywhere and the heroes literally being personified bits from Chex Mix. The game is so bizarre, so inexplicably surreal in its blending of corporate excess, board room design, and cloud cuckooland ideas, that it’s hard not to find it somewhat charming.

Beyond this though, the presentation here is an absolute mess. The game has been fully rebuilt in 3D with some detailed character models, but these models don’t animate especially well, and they find themselves in sparse, bland environments. Yet, despite this lack of anything even remotely bordering on impressive, the game still has its framerates slow to a crawl at times, and the whole thing takes up 2.5GB of space in your Nintendo Switch’s memory… for an unimpressive remake of a 26 year-old game, no less!

Probably a large part of the reason for this bloated file size is the extensive voice acting throughout the game, with your absurd character making extremely cheesy comments in seemingly every new area. While this voice acting is pitch-perfect for the sort of game this is, other elements of the sound aren’t, from the droning, bland music, to the lack of sound effects when you get hit. It’s almost as if this game was released before the person responsible for sound design uploaded all their work, and they just shrugged and pushed it out anyway.

Then there’s the gameplay… wow, this is terrible. But you know, it’s kinda’ terrible in a way that’s almost enjoyable just to be amused at how bad it is. Level design is awful and at times nonsensical, there’s no map and the repetitive level design makes it easy to get lost even though the game is painfully linear. Enemy AI is absolutely brain-dead, only moving directly toward you when it sees you. Enemies are also laughably slow and easily avoided. This is perhaps just as well, because the game is extremely stingy with giving players access to ammo, meaning that they’ll quickly have to fall back on their melee spoon (yes, you read that right). This is no great loss though – just swipe at enemies while moving backwards and you’ll avoid most damage.

The result is a game that’s extremely slow-paced, bland, easy, and just not worth playing… at least, not as a game. As an oddball conversation piece and a relic of a strange era in advertising, it is perhaps amusing enough to give a look… but you may want to just get the PC version, which is free. The Nintendo Switch version inexplicably costs $5, and even at the sale price of $2 this seems overpriced for an odd curio and promotional item that was always only free until it went to Switch. Skip this breakfast.

tl;dr – Chex Quest HD is a First-Person Shooter that remakes the cult classic cereal pack-in promotional game, and it is every bit as bizarre and surreal now as it was when it first released. Unfortunately, the performance is terrible and the gameplay is absolutely atrocious, and the $5 price tag is insulting for an advertisement poorly disguised as a game that has been free in every other release. If you want to check this out, download the free PC version on Steam. In any case, stay far away from this version of the game.

Grade: D-

.

This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Port / Remake, Most Overpriced ($5), The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award (2.5 GB)

.

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Andy Miller, Exlene, Johannes, Ilya Zverev, Connor Armstrong, Eli Goodman, Kristoffer Wulff, Stov, and Gabriel Coronado-Medina. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}