XBLA August roundup part 1: Castle Crashers

Sep 09 2008

After a seemingly endless dry season (much like qft.net’s these past couple of months) with few notable titles released during its course, XBLA suddenly received an onslaught of fantastic titles, each a greater hit than the last. With the beautifully artistic Braid getting the ball rolling in the early days of the month, the eagerly awaited Bionic Commando: Rearmed leapt swung into action soon afterwards. Galaga Legions took its maiden flight another week after that, until finally Castle Crashers made its debut a further 7 days following that, to bring the August lineup to a climactic end.

This series of features will bring the entire month into a neat collection of reviews to give you all the lowdown on just what makes these titles really worth their weight in MS Points. In today’s instalment, I will be taking an epic crusade into the two dimensional world of the Castle Crashers, developed by the talented duo Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin of Newgrounds fame.

Let me just begin this review by saying how immensely biased I am in favour of Castle Crashers. No, wait – hear me out on this. While it’s not much to gloat about, I’m very happy to have been one of the many people who knew of the masterminds behind this game before they became known as The Behemoth. Being able to observe and even enjoy the material they produced as they developed their skills as a game development team has made me more than partial towards their work, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being the least bit excited about this title once it was announced.

Firstly, let’s deal with what makes this game instantly recognizable as one of Paladin’s works; the aesthetics. Characters within the game are proportioned much like those in Alien Hominid; sporting small bodies with disproportionately large heads. This slightly cutesy appearance contrasts with the blatant and constant cartoon violence in the game, and only helps to add to the humour that is ever present in the games developed by The Behemoth. Animations of the characters are nothing short of fantastic, although things tend to get a little more than crowded on screen from time to time and some of this detail can get lost in the heat of a large battle, along with yourself. Quite literally. While playing this game amongst friends, cries of help followed by the question “where am I?” were not a rare occurrence.

In spite of Castle Crashers’ graphics receiving such particular treatment, the sound was far from neglected. It boasts a superb soundtrack, provided by the Newgrounds community itself, that does a fantastic job at complementing the game’s action without ever being unnecessarily intrusive. There was one particular instance when I felt the music wasn’t entirely appropriate, but otherwise it was bliss. Upon finishing the game, I hunted down where to download the OST, and much to my surprise i found that the majority of the songs were still available from Newgrounds for free, personal use. There are links at the bottom of this article available to any who are interested.

All this is but the icing on the cake of what makes Castle Crashers so fantastic (as should be the case with any game); the core gameplay. As a Castle Crasher, you are tasked with traversing the world map along a vast multitude of landscapes ranging from industrial castles to snowy peaks, from jungles to searing deserts. Each different landscape boasts its own set of characteristic enemies to battle against, and perhaps even a few hazards thrown into the mix for good measure. No expense is spared to make the entire journey as varied as possible from beginning to end, and that’s just awesome. Aside from making the whole span of the campaign feel as epic as possible from start to finish, there is never a dull moment from seeing the same recycled set of enemies one too many times. They even go so far as to include ninja pirates in one part of the game. If that isn’t awesome, I don’t know what is.

The controls are simple and responsive, with the X and Y buttons assigned to weak and strong attacks respectively, the B button to using items or special equipment (such as the bow and arrow) and of course the A button to jumping. As well as a button to defend yourself from attacks, your character has the option to use special abilities in the form of spells for some, and special equipment for others. I dare say that some characters get a far sweeter deal when it comes to these special abilities. These discrepancies become painfully evident towards the end of the game, where some characters seem inherently far better equipped to tackle the kinds of enemies that you’re faced with than others might be, even at higher levels. Another slight hitch in the combat arises when engaged in a fast paced battle of attrition; usually during the later bossfights. As the entire game is two dimensional, set on a stage that has depth, it is oftentimes difficult to tell whether you are on the same plane as your target, and usually your attacks end up going straight past your enemies, often a spell that cost a large part of your mana. With practice this becomes less of an issue, however it is still quite frustrating when your best combo still falls flat because you were a mere few pixels too high.

As you play the game, your character levels up in order to grow stronger, as well as gain new techniques such as combos and spells. Within each level there are a number of unlockable items in the form of weapons, equipment, new characters as well as animal orbs; little floating critters that follow you around and give you either stat bonuses or have special abilities of their own (finding buried items, or attacking enemies randomly to name but a few). All these aspects add up to a hugely varied game that has much to offer even after the first play through. It is addictive to a fault, and has huge replay value that few games of even larger production values can boast about.

All in all it already makes for quite a solid, enjoyable experience, however there is one last trick up Castle Crashers’ sleeve, and that would be its multiplayer. Although the netcode released with the game itself proved to be somewhat flimsy, local multiplayer works like a charm. If playing alone is chaos, having four of you ripping up your enemies to shreds is absolute mayhem. I could easily go so far as to compare the multiplayer experience to SSB:Brawl (it can be just as confusing at times, too), only this time you’re all united against the CPU players. That is, until the end of a bossfight, of course. Should you succeed in defeating a boss that holds one of the four princesses hostage, you and your teammates must first compete for the loot that you collect from the dead boss in a mad dash for cash – and then duke it out in a last man standing free for all for the princess’ kiss. It’s a tense couple of minutes to follow each bossfight, and certainly a welcome change to the usual grind that’s present throughout the game.

In summary, Castle Crashers is a silly, fun, no holds barred slugfest that is easy to pick up for casual players, yet still offers sufficient depth to keep even the most discerning gamer amused right to the very end. To all Xbox 360 owners I wholly recommend this game. It is worth the 1200 microsoft point price tag it sports, and then some – even moreso if you have friends to enjoy it with.

Throughout the duration of writing this review, I was accompanied by the wonderful sounds of the Castle Crashers OST. As promised earlier on, here is a list of links to all the Castle Crashers songs currently available on the Newgrounds audio portal (at least, those I have managed to find).

Remember that these songs are available under the licenses as described on each respective page, so do take the time to read and understand the conditions under which you are downloading them. Enjoy!

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