castlecrasherstitleA 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

andPOP Rating - 4 Stars






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