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!