Played on:
Xbox 360
While there are a lot of dead-weight games sitting on Xbox Live Arcade right now, many gamers have stuck to a select few and just play the hell out of them. With no real rating scheme for the games on the Xbox 360's download service, the massive list of titles available is pretty daunting - there are just tons of them, mostly ranging from $5 to $15. You know some are good, and the trials tell you a little bit about how they play, but is anyone still playing now? One of the newest titles to hit Arcade is Castle Crashers, an independently-made action game that's getting a lot of play and plenty of buzz. And for good reason - this game's been in the works for two years, and that effort shows as soon as you start your adventure.
Castle Crashers is a game in the style of classic 2D beat-em-ups like Final Fight, Battletoads, or Golden Axe. Its many references to these games show intimate knowledge of the genre, but it's the action - playable in cooperative mode for up to four players either on the same Xbox or over Live - that shows the developers definitely understand what made these games fun over a decade ago. It starts out with a medieval setting, but it eventually runs a wide range of environments and enemies past you. And the whole time you'll be fighting for your life with different melee swings, jumping attacks, and ranged assaults via a bow and arrow, boomerang, or powerful magic blasts. The game has some light RPG elements that allow you to level up and put points into four basic stats: Strength to hit harder with melee attacks, Magic to increase the power of your arcane attacks and the rate at which you regenerate mana, Defense which gives you more HP and makes you tougher, and finally Agility which makes you faster and allows you to perform better ranged attacks.
You'll be able to upgrade your weapon along the way, picking up new things to stab your enemies with either in shops or when dropped from the bodies you leave behind. Money can be racked up from corpses too, River City Ransom style, and you'll be able to buy temporary items and healing potions in the local shops. Some bosses will leave massive chests behind when they die, causing a shower of gems and money to come down as you (and possibly your buddies) run around trying to pick up the most.
One interesting level of depth is the animal faces that can follow you around. As you collect each animal, you can switch to it and it will stay with you - invincible, and floating on its own - to perform a specific task. For example, the bat will occasionally find your enemies and chew on their faces, while others will allow you to jump higher, uncover items for you, or increase a stat directly. Throw in special secret items that can only be found by going back through previous levels with specific animal heads, and you could find some interesting stuff.
Now, going back through levels you've already finished might sound like a pain in the ass, and it really is in many games, but here it's not a big deal at all. Jump into a game with friends - your character stats and unlocked weapons stay with you whether you're playing alone or online - and just beat up a ton of stuff with them if you're ahead of their progress level. Getting four players into a game together and just all bashing away at things is a total blast, and the game even mixes things up by occasionally making you fight each other as well.
Everything in Castle Crashers is hand-drawn with 2D art, but it's extremely crisp and well-animated on an HDTV. The creators have a pretty good imagination and their sense of humor shines through to the player; the forest full of cute animals that immediately poop themselves when they hear the level's end-boss coming is rather goofy, while massive bugs that pop out of quicksand are holding forks and have a little bib on to show they're ready to dine. The whole game is full of little pop culture references and other strange and amusing things, and they really do add something to the game that really have nothing to do with how it plays.
There are some additional modes, too, but I think that the character unlocking and ability to level up multiple characters separately - the four original characters all have their own unique magic attacks - is what's going to occupy most gamers' time. The sad part is that the game does have some occasional but serious bugs, causing some end-level bosses to break entirely, forcing you to pop back to the menu and restart the level. Beyond that, the game can crash when trying to join a game over Live, and that's if you can get in at all - it's very sensitive to the NAT settings on your router and internet connection, so if pretty much anyone is having an issue you can get dumped back to the main menu. In my experience so far, it's better to play with people you know who have their network set up correctly, as trying to find games over Live often leaves you staring at the connection screen for 20 minutes until you just get disgusted and go play single player.
Castle Crashers is a seemingly steep 1200 points ($15) on Xbox Live Arcade and it's one of those games that's a chore to get working with online play, but overall the game's still well worth your cash. The side-scrolling action is slick and fun, and the developers have added just enough modern-day complexity to make this a true successor to the classic beat-em-up genre that dominated arcades back in the 90s. And if the creators can get a patch put together to make it easier to get into games, then Castle Crashers will easily be a must-have Live Arcade title.
