Intellectual Gamer

I recently got a chance to play and beat Castle Crashers for Xbox Live Arcade.

The game reminded me most of the old school Golden Axe series. When I was younger I had quite alot of fun with friends trying to slash my way through the game, which I never did accomplish due to its absurd old school difficulty!

Castle Crashers is good as it achieves what it strived to accomplish I believe. Its strongest element is that it never takes itself to seriously. The game has a very comical aspect to it that will make the endless violence much more enjoyable for the average person.

Although reminiscent of the old school Golden Axe style game, Castle Crashers has much more depth in light of its more complicated stat element and combat system.

In Castle Crashers you are able to level up your characters through combat (allowing you to put points toward 4 stats; Magic, Defense, Attack, Agility), equip various weapons that effect your stats (from Axes to Sausages), and ‘equip’ pets that as well effect your stats or give you new abilities (from Chickens to Eyeball-Monster-Thingies).

The game moves through a diverse amount of locations in which you fight varied enemies with different abilities and move lists. Its a challenging game in which you’ll find yourself re-playing old levels just to get that miniscule useful stat boost. Your character will slowly learn a few more combos that will help you juggle various enemies as you level up. As well you’ll get a few more spell abilities if you decide to focus on putting points towards your magic skill. However how you play will be variable on how you want to play to a certain extent.

I personally value speed more than anything else. I focused on my agility stat which made me very weak but very fast and strong with arrows. Whereas the person I played with focused on creating a well rounded character. Safe to say when we were forced to combat each other Double Dragon style over a princess’s kiss after defeating select bosses, the combat involved me running and shooting from far away as my partner chased frantically after me attempting to lop my head off. Ill be honest, most of the time I got my head lopped off.

I feel that the game had quite a few distinct strengths, they follow:

Strengths:

• Comical: A quirky sense of humour that flows consistently through the entire game.
• Content: If you’re a perfectionist you’ll have a ton of content to fly through.
• Friend Value: Very addictive coop game play.

Despite its strengths the game is not unscathed, its weaknesses follow:

Weaknesses:

• Variable Value: Value heavily dependent on coop factor, not a game for individual players.
• It’s Over Already: The story is straightforward and short.

Overall I find Castle Crashers, despite various reported online problems, to be what the developers had in mind when making it. This makes it a good success in my eyes. Its a great addition to a classic genre that is nigh untouched as of recently.

The price of 1200 MC points is a little steep I feel, but if you have many online friends or many local friends you’ll be sure to get your value. Obviously the opposite holds true, if you aren’t going to play the game with anyone it won’t be worth the current price. With this in mind, my rating:

Rating: Buy this game.

Love: Sense of humour, one level distinctly that involved the constant ridiculous defecation of animals.

Detest: Lack of item sharing can be problematic at times, a coop game should have such a function.

Bonus: In the games pet house, where you store your various discovered pets, there is a locked door at the back of the room. Eventually you’ll stumble upon a weapon that is literally a giant golden key, by using this to attack the door you can unlock it revealing a dark closet in which a secret pet is hidden.

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