More and more games are coming out for the Xbox Live Arcade that are continually going over the top and pleasing gamers everywhere. We recently seen: Braid, Geometry Wars 2, and now Castle Crashers. To summarize, Castle Crashers is just shy of being one of the best hack and slash games that Max and I have ever played. With some of the simplest and intuitive controls to work with. It addicted us, and for the following three days it was the only game that we cared about. The game's developers, The Behemoth, struck gold in 2004 with their hit Alien Homnid. Now, it 2008, they have rightfully followed up and pleased audiences once again with Castle Crashers.

Let's start with the art style. We've seen some decent vector games in the past, but none of them can trump the sheer comedy and detail that was put into Castle Crashers. Whether it's some absurd scene where you're watching animals relieve their bowels or maybe a gigantic monster chasing you down while you ride those animals, the game will most likely put a big smile on your face. The animation in the game, including character combat, magic attacks, enemy movement, and cut scenes is smooth and believing, even when there's hordes of baddies on the screen and you're battling them along side three other friends.


This brings us to the part of the game that shines the brightest; the co-op mode. Three other people can join you in your quest to save the princesses. Working together by cooperatively fighting enemies and reviving each other when comrades die makes for a great party game. However, at the end of each level you'll find yourself competing with your friends over the bonus treasure which, respectively, flies out of a huge chest while hot techno blasts in the background. It's all just so good! Furthermore, after all the treasure has been collected, Castle Crashers continues the competition and puts everyone in their own corner for the ultimate "king of the hill" showdown. That's right, once you save the princess from the bad guys you'll have to fight each other to win the privilege to kiss the fair lady.

Moving onto some of the features of the gameplay. Experience points are gained by the amount of damage each player does. Leveling up allows you to increase your base stats: Strength, Magic, Defense, and Agility. One of the best parts of the game is collecting all the weapons, all 40 of them. And while the plundering of treasure at the end of the level is fun, the plundering of weapons as you play through the levels can be somewhat annoying. In multiplayer mode, when a player picks up a weapon only he/she can use that weapon. So if you find that the weapon may be better suited for one of the other players, you'll have to replay that level to get the drop again and have the desired player pick it up. It's not too bad, but I just think there could have been a little better way of doing it. Furthermore, fruit (health) and gold/gems also randomly drop from enemies. Craig Sullivan, one of the admins from ScoreHero (who goes by the alias: Sully) got so fed up from having to look through numerous GameFAQs to find a decent listing of the game's collectibles that he devised his own wiki dedicated to Castle Crashers, which can be found here. Though it's still a work in progress it organizes the game's collectibles neatly and clearly.

The end of the game may seem like it comes to soon, but its length is still respectable for an Arcade Live adventure game. Playing four player co-op mode, it took us an estimated six hours to go through the game, collecting a decent amount of weapons and animals. The world map allows you to travel wherever your like, letting your "farm" already beaten areas for exp/items, if you so desire. The world map offers an open arena where you can fight with/against your friends, shops to stock up on potions and weapons when preparing for upcoming difficult levels, and an animal farm where you can view and switch off the animals that accompany you. These animals are found throughout the world and they: alter your base stats, increase the potency of your magic, or even allow you to gain more experience points from battling. In my personal opinion, if Castle Crashers added more levels, some diversity and additions in the characters' spell casting, and maybe the integration of different types of equipment, I believe it could have been made into a cheap retail game instead of a pricey Xbox Live Arcade game. Yet even with its relatively high Live Arcade price tag, it gives the player a bang for their buck. Even after you've beaten the initial story, they up the difficulty in a "Hardcore" mode, which you can play to collect missing items and continue leveling your character(s).


Lastly, I'll mention a few of the problems that scratch the surface of the game, pushing it ever so slightly away from a perfect score. One of the largest complaints that has risen throughout the community is the corruption of the save file when you exit to the dashboard. Also, while we were playing in four player co-op mode, my friend and I got stuck behind some collision detection, which ultimately forced us to exit to the world map and replay the level. Finally, there are some online problems, which the development team is already openly aware about. Their blog states, "Castle Crashers has some online issues as well as other technical difficulties that we are focusing on before anything else. That is our top priority." Besides those discrepancies, there is said to be an absence of two of the unlockable characters as well as the chainsaw weapon, but again, the Castle Crashers' team knows about these problems and are working towards fixing them as soon as possible.

So there you go. Castle Crashers is the hottest new title on the Xbox Live Arcade right now and it's totally worth getting. No "ifs", "ands", or "buts." We can only hope that the greatly positive response they're getting from the game's release inspires them to start working (if they already haven't started) on a sequel, or, another similar type of game. So you can now stop reading this infernal review and start crashing some castles. Goodluck!

This little gem was found by Max, but I decided to follow up. So, more footage about Mirror's Edge. It shows a lot of the actions and in-game maneuvers you'll be able to do: leaping, swinging, wall-running, etc. I personally favor how the weapons system functions, reflecting realism. You won't be able to carry guns if you're running and jumping.

What I'm most worried about is the AI. I know it's not a tactics game, however I'm hoping that the enemies are smart enough to try and flank you and use other strategy to trap you. Additionally, I hope there are one or two other game difficulty levels to intrigue hardcore gamers and add to replay value, making the overall experience all the more interesting and unique.

We'll have to see how everything goes down in two months when it's released for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC on November 11.

It was bound to happen. It all started with Guitar Hero, it went to Frets on Fire, and now Jam Legend is out and in beta release. As an overall consensus, the online game is decent. They have a few things that Guitar hero doesn't, but they're also is lacking a few things that Guitar Hero fans are used to. Like Frets on Fire, you'll be using your keyboard as your so-called guitar, with numbers one through five as your frets and the Enter key as your strum bar. TechCrunch recently wrote about this busy little online app, and truthfully, it's worth giving a chance.


That's right, Jam Legend is totally online. Whether this is a good or bad thing can be argued. While it's nice to see online features such as "Duel a Friend" or "Showdowns" people will slower connection may find the notes lagging a bit. At my office Jam Legend seemed to run perfectly fine, however, at home I found the notes lagging a bit. It was still playable, just a bit annoying at times. It meshes together light social networking feature allowing you to add friends and followers to your profile. The single player is solid, housing a plethora of options and stats that show your progress. For instance, while playing songs you'll find a vertical bar to the right of the screen depicting your "goal" for that song along with the "best score" by the community. You get a global rating and a global rank within the community, though it doesn't mean much beside status.

The few things that they didn't copy from Guitar Hero is the star power and the star rating after each song. Being a serious Guitar Hero player myself, as well as being part of the ScoreHero community, these shortcomings make Jam Legend feel a bit lacking. Sustain notes and hammer-ons/pull-offs are still present and work just as you're used to in Guitar Hero. You have your "rock meter" so to speak as your indicator of how well or how poorly you're doing while playing songs. Furthermore, you have a note streak and multiplier that cleanly mimics Guitar Hero.


Ultimately, Jam Legend is combining both Guitar Hero and ScoreHero together into one happy bundle. They keep track of your scores and progress and also have leaderboards for all the songs. And obviously being a smaller start-up, the available songs in Jam Legend are all done from smaller indie artists, but still the songs are decent. Being online, they can continually update and improve the app as they start receiving solid feedback. And it's obvious that they are looking to expand even more into the Rock Band frontier, seeing how they already have slots for Bass, Drums, and Piano, on the instrument selection screen. In the end, it's a well-made site that boasts as a nice Guitar Hero clone, has a clean user interface, and solid multiplayer functionality. Jam Legend gets a 85%!

Yes, it's finally here! Out with the old and in with the new. Obviously the design reflects our game much better than the old, plain layout. We're planning on adding a forum to the site, though we can honestly say we have no idea when that will be released.

We also updated the Game page, as the game will no longer be made with Pyglet, but instead with Microsoft's XNA library. This will obviously enable us to release it for the upcoming developer's Xbox Arcade store! We also hope to have a version of the game available on the PC when it's complete.

Autumn is upon us and we have our eyes set on the hefty list of games that are coming out! We'll be sure to keep you updated as we preview, review, and poke fun at all the upcoming goodies.

It's quite evident that music games are getting the spotlight nowadays. It seems that every publisher is looking to put out a rhythm-based game. The Wii is no exception. They were the last to get Rock Band, however, something else is apparently coming for our system in glossy white armor... Musiic Party? Well hmm okay.


The game is for three people, who will be able to play the rhythm guitar, the bass, and the drums. The game will include more than 30 licensed songs, however a master list hasn't yet been confirmed. Most of the songs seem to be coming from Europe. For the guitar instruments, the notes will come from the bottom, top, left, and right of the screen. You'll have to push the analog stick on the nunchuk in the direction the note came from when it reaches the center. As for drums, the notes come from the top of the screen and require you to whip your nunchuk downwards as they reach the center of the screen.

With Guitar Hero and Rock Band sitting pretty as kings of the rhythm games, it's hard for people to accept any others. The motions in Musiic Party seem a bit awkward, but we'll have to see how it does. Not much else is known; the release date is set vaguely for the beginning of 2009 in Europe.

Source: GC 2008: Musiic Party

Soon and very soon, Spore is coming. It seems like it's been years on end that we've been waiting for this game; oh wait, we have been waiting that long. The release date is set though and Spore will be hitting store shelves on the 9th of September. While we've already gotten our hands on the Creature Creator and seen the multitude of gameplay videos online, there's still a lot about the game we don't know about.

Obviously, we know the basis of the game is user creation and evolution of a specie, but the fine details haven't been fully revealed to us yet. According to IGN.com, there are going to be five main stages of evolution throughout the game, starting with the Cell Stage. This stage begins with a massive meteor raining down onto an ocean type planet which will be the introduction phase for all players. Organisms from the meteor (you) will make your way through an enormous body of liquid with one sole purpose; surviving. During this time you will also collect DNA which will enable your organism to grow and develop. The things that your organism scavenges and eats indicates the types of alterations and additions that you are able to make to your organism. Some of these additions include spikes to defend against predators, or tentacles to allow you to move faster.

Naturally, eating has other functions. As you eat, you grow larger. As your grow through the Cell Stage you'll move up in the food chain finding larger predators, but also more useful and interesting samples of DNA and such to evolve your organism. The last function of eating relates to the old saying, "you are what you eat." Choosing to prey on other organisms for food in contrast to if you decide to solely eat plant life can determine whether or not your creature in the future will be more carnivorous and aggressive, or docile and passive.

For a simplified, but decent comparison of how the Cell Stage will probably play, try out Flow on the PS3 or download the free flash version here. Below is IGN's source video walkthrough of the Cell Stage Preview.

Week two of Microsoft's "Summer of Arcade" promotion saw the release of the highly anticipated platformer/puzzle hybrid, Braid. As I returned from my vacation, I hopped on my XBox and forked over the 1200 points. Yes, I've seen the outcry over the "high" price, but in my opinion it is very well worth it. Over the past few days I have played through Braid about 3 times, my final time making sure to get all the collectibles.



Braid puts you in control of the main character, Tim, and also the flow of time. You can move forwards and backwards at different speeds, much like your DVD player. Each of the 6 (+) worlds also introduces a new time based theme that you can exploit to solve the puzzles. For example, the 2nd world introduces items and platforms that are not affected by your time manipulation skills, and instead behave as if time was still moving regularly during these sequences.

The gameplay is Braid's strongest point. The puzzles may stump you, sometimes for an hour or more, but it never ceases to be entertaining. You can always move on and come back later, which is another interesting point; most of the puzzles in braid are completely optional, and at points you can run straight through a level in under 10 seconds. You won't receive any of the story this way, and it is definitely not the intended way of playing, but it certainly gives you freedom to continue if you do get stuck on a puzzle.

Figuring out some of the tougher puzzles can be very rewarding as well. It feels like a huge accomplishment when you finally solve it. I really encourage you to solve the puzzles for yourself, the game is fairly short and once you solve a puzzle once it will be a whole lot easier the next time around. Even the official walkthrough pushes you to work through them by yourself. Spoiling a puzzle can really take the fun, and the point, out of this game.

The audio and visual are also exceptional. You feel like you are walking through a living painting. The colors are vibrant and the world animates beautifully, creating an intense dream-like feeling. The soundtrack mixes well with the visuals, and while short it never seems repetitive. There is more info on it here.

Finally we come to the story. The story is a major player in Braid, and after beating it 3 times I'm probably still missing things. To sum it up and trying not to spoil anything: Tim is in search of a princess, and there is a lot of Mario homages and strangeness to follow. At first I was a little put off, probably because I was incredibly confused. However, after the next couple of playthroughs I got a better understanding of it and came to appreciate it much more. It's a little overwhelming at first, but give it a chance and it will start to come together.

Overall I was very pleased with Braid, and had a lot of fun working through the puzzles. I got around 10+ hours of play out of it, and for $15, that is more then reasonable. I will probably return to it in the future too, it seems like a game that is fun to pick up every now and then... very reminiscent of Portal.

So gametrailers.com released a new preview of Rock Band 2. It's already on our upcoming list, clocking in for a September 14th release on Xbox, (October 19th for PS3 and Xbox 360 bundle, and November 18th for the Wii version) but here's a small teaser for the time being. Visit Penny Arcade's thread on it here for further information including the known setlist for Rock Band 2, which respectfully holds 84 master tracks, and the Achievements list that will accompany the Xbox 360 version of the game. Only two months away, Max and I can't wait!