Castle Crashers
Publisher: Microsoft Developer: The Behemoth Platform: Xbox 360 Release: 2008 Players: 1-4 Genre: Brawler / RPG Rating: 8.7 / 10.0: Fantastic
Above is a group of players battling barbarians.
Back in 2008, indie games had only recently been rising to popularity, and Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade housed some fantastic individually-developed titles. Microsoft decided to publish The Behemoth's second game, Castle Crashers, the hilarious, hand-drawn hack-and-slash adventure that has since become the eleventh most downloaded title on the Xbox 360. The story begins when the knight of your choice is partying in a castle. Suddenly, an evil wizard and his army of goblins steal a magic crystal and kidnap four princesses. Due to the main characters never speaking, this cannot be explained. That's even more vague than a Mario game's story, but this is entirely overshadowed by the incredibly fun gameplay and abundant humor.
This may be a beat-'em-up game, but the combat doesn't feel repetitive, as there are tons of combos to learn and weapons to acquire. In addition to your primary and sub-weapons, you will also eventually a acquire an Animal Orb. These adorable floating pets all have a unique ability. Scratchpaw the tiger, for example, increases your strength and agility, and Bitey Bat occasionally nibbles on the noggins of your foes. Adding to the depth of the battles are the magic attacks. These attacks vary based on the element your character wields-- red knight uses lightning, orange uses fire, green uses poison, and blue uses ice. As you upgrade your magic statistic, you unlock new moves. You can use your magical move set by holding the right trigger. You can't just use an endless stream of poison bursts or fireballs-- your magic use is limited by a meter that slowly refills after being used, much like in the Zelda series. Every time you level up, you are given skill points to assign to statistics once you return to the map. You can upgrade your strength, magic, defense, and agility. You make a magic-oriented fire knight like my brother, or a balanced lightning knight like me. Each stat can be upgraded up to 24 times, so it will take you awhile to max out your stats. If you think you made the wrong character choice or have maxed out, you are able to restart from square one as any other knight or secret character.
As I stated earlier, Castle Crashers is chock-full of humor. One moment, you'll be leaping over logs on a baby a deer that is endlessly streaming droppings behind it, and the next moment you'll be in a river battling a massive, hairball-spewing "catfish" with a cat's head while you're either riding a fish or dinosaur or standing atop a log, wheel, or dead bandit. I'm not joking when I say that, and every aspect of the game from the locales to the boss battles is laughter-inducing. My favorite touch is that if you rescue a princess while playing with other people, you all must fight to the death over who she kisses. The humor, as well as the abundant cartoonish gore stand out even more due to The Behemoth (as well as popular Flash content-based website Newgrounds) founder Dan Paladin's charming and vibrant hand-drawing art style that wouldn't be out of place in a wacky so-stupid-it's-funny cartoon. You will traverse a large map as you progress. You can not only access stages from here, but also visit shop, PvP arenas, or the blacksmith. This is a game that is fun no matter what, but it is pretty much meant to be played with friends. So far have I've hardly played without my brother or friends by my side. As a solo experience, the game is still fun, but extremely difficult, especially during the boss battles.
One of my favorite aspects of cooperative play is the revive system. If your pal goes down, you are able to use CPR to revive them. While performing this, a gauge will be displayed above your fallen comrade displaying a heart in the center and a moving white vertical line. In order to restore to most health possible, you must press Y when the line is in the center. There can be issues when trying to revive your buddy. For example, my brother was once killed by a spiked crusher in a factory stage, and my friend and I were unable to even ineffectively revive him before a spiky mass fell on our heads. We had to continue without him, and soon died as well. Additionally, your friends may force you to rush the revive so they can join in on battle, than once again die. The main problem I have with the story mode is that if you get stuck for a long time on one stage, you have no choice to resort to-- ugh-- grinding to be able to power through. Additionally, there are several minor bugs such as a character freezing or you being teleported into a foe's arms after interrupting a grab animation. Another small quibble is that no two players can select the same character. This usually isn't an issue, but it can be incredibly irritating when playing online with random people. Is it really fair that your only good character is a level 35 blue knight, but your friend picked his level 12 blue knight first? The main adventure is fantastic, but there's even more to the game. There are two other modes-- the Arena, and All You Can Quaff. In the Arena, you can face hordes of monsters independently. If you have friends with you, you can select your teams and partake in Melee. a battle to the death in which you are able to use all combos and magic attacks; Quickdraw, a bows-only battle in which you speed up as you collect flaming arrows; and Treasure. Here, you are given only a shovel to dig up gold and gems, which dishes out damage to your foes. You will eventually unlock Beefy, in which you can only attack your enemies only by snatching a Behemoth, the developer's surprisingly small chicken mascot, transforming you into a massive muscular murderer. All You Can Quaff is an eating competition in which you must rapidly mash the X and Y buttons to consume food faster than your pals and computer-controlled opponents. If you don't mind getting blisters, you won't mind playing consecutive rounds of this, but it's fun the first time around. I also adore the splendid soundtrack by a wide array of artists that blends orchestrated pieces with zany and intense techno tunes. All of these modes can be enjoyed via Xbox Live, though the aforementioned character restrictions are a more prominent issue. Castle Crashers is incredibly entertaining, but I recommend bringing along some friends to make the most out of this title. This is a game that strongly deserves a place in any Xbox 360 owner's digital library.
Ups
Varied combat
Very humorous
Charming hand-drawn visuals
Game can be replayed with all characters
Four player co-op
Revival system
Additional modes
Splendid soundtrack
Downs
Extremely vague story
Grinding sometimes necessary to improve
Reviving can sometimes be impossible
Only one player can use each character
Mildly buggy
This game is also available on Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PC (via Steam)
The System Difference: You can purchase both the original and remastered version of this game on Xbox One. The remaster runs at 60 FPS and replaces All You Can Quaff with the much more entertaining Back Off Barbarian mode in which you press the face buttons to move across a map while avoiding barbarians. The PC version also has this mode. I only briefly played the game on PS3, but I found the volleyball mode that replaced All You Can Quaff to be incredibly fun. On Xbox One, PS3, and PC, you can unlock characters that were DLC on 360 via Insane mode.
ESRB: T Content: Blood & Gore, Cartoon Violence, and Crude Humor (PARENTAL WARNING: This game contains large amounts of animated blood) Price: $14.99 (Download)
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