In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
A short, 2D man stumbles into a tavern and dies. His body flashes and then disappears. This is your introduction to the world of Castle Crashers, a game full of self-reflexive and irreverent humour. Someone has crashed the castle and kidnapped four princesses. You must choose the Blue, Red, Green or Orange knight to go out and rescue the princesses and win them back one kiss at a time.
Castle Crashers is a classic, side-scrolling arcade game. You progress across linear levels from left to right and defeat bad guys as you go. The game has many throwbacks to the coin-op era, including a flashing finger pointing you right as the screen is cleared. A more contemporary twist has been added, as the characters level up with attributable skill points to strength, magic, defense and speed.
This is an action game with a quick pace. The game does not halt when your character gains a level; instead, it let’s you adjust your skill points between stages. Magic spells are limited to three per character with generic elemental themes such as ice for the Blue Knight and fire for the Orange Knight. As you clear stages, more characters are unlocked. I played as the Orange Knight and ran into big trouble in the lava stage as the enemies were immune to my magic attacks. Later in the game, I encountered more magic-resistant enemies. During these sections, the combat became very one-dimensional as I button mashed my way to the next stage so it’s important to keep your characters balanced if playing solo.
The controls are quite simple to pick up, allowing even novice video game players a chance to crash some castles. On the other hand, not all of the buttons on the controller have been utilized. Throughout the game, your character will unlock different weapons and helper animals. You can only change your weapon in between stages by navigating all the way back to the beginning of the map. The game would have benefited from the ability to map weapons to the directional-pad, making it possible to switch from magic-boosting mace to power hammer in a click.
Hardcore gamers will take pleasure in the boss battles. These are a lot of fun. Often the battles began with a lot of cursing and swearing on my part before I would eventually catch onto the right rhythm as each boss (like classic games of the past) have a certain technique to defeat. The boss of the ice level, for example, summons crystals to crash down constantly, forcing your character to literally skate across screen without stopping in one place.
At one point I got to a boss that was an evil corn-on-the-cob — and here, please, let me tell you about what makes this game special. Castle Crashers is simply the most cohesive game experience on Xbox Live Arcade. The graphics in 1080i are stunning! The art style is bright and colourful, and matches perfectly the overall wacky tone (indeed, featured artist Dan Paladin has been credited with “Art ‘n Animation”). The music is trancey and frenetic. As I blasted the giant, evil corn-on-the-cob with fireballs — POPCORN FLEW OFF. Yes, there have been zany games in the past like Earthworm Jim and Katamari Damacy, but evil corn-on-the-cob is about as close as we’ve come to kooky video game perfection.
Castle Crashers is available on the Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 Microsoft Points — a fair price to pay for a game with such high production value. The single-player took me about 12 hours to complete, and there are a multitude of characters to choose from for a second playthrough. Multiplayer is where Castle Crashers really shines. It supports up to four players in local or online coop. It’s a great party game which lends itself well to the informal pass-the-controller dynamic. Developer The Behemoth has already released an update patch, and more playable characters via downloadable content. The game also comes with an eating contest mini-game and a dueling mini-game for multiplayer action both online and off.
Now, this downloadable content dubbed the King Pack comes at the cost of 160 Microsoft points and provides those that download it with three new weapons (the king’s mace, a giant lollipop, and the golden sword) a new pet named Pelter that at times, freezes enemies, and two new playable characters, the open-faced grey knight (same as closed-faced grey knight) and the king himself (whom has the element of gold and has a magical spell that heals him and those around him). This downloadable pack adds more replay value for those that have gone through the title time and time again and need something new to play with. As well, adding the healing magic, we are introduced to a new dynamic in the game, that of the healing role for the rest of the team.
Overall, Castle Crashers was a blast to play and now even after almost a year has passed, it’s still one of my favourite Xbox Live Arcade titles out there. Check out The Behemoth’s website at www.thebehemoth.com for their contest in which players guess when exactly 1 million players will be on the castle crashers leader board!
Gameplay 3.5/5
Graphics 5/5
Sound 4.5/5
Replay Value 4.5/5
