Storming the castle to rescue a princess is certainly nothing new, but that common gaming task gets a fantastic facelift with Behemoth's Castle Crashers. The vaunted 'Summer Of Arcade' is certainly finishing on a high note.
There are three game modes here to slice through, All You Can Quaff, Arena, and Castle Crashers. All You Can Quaff is a silly little button-mashing eating contest that you might give a quick look at before moving on for good. Arena is a slightly more time consuming, with a single room providing a steady stream of enemies to blast through. They may seem never-ending, but those who survive the onslaught will receive unlockable characters. Neither of these two modes comes close to the depth or joy found in the main game, Castle Crashers.
The game is your basic side scrolling beat em up, with RPG elements thrown in for good measure. You play as one of four initial characters in a quest to save four princesses from their captors, while doing the typical weapon/item/health/gold collection and store browsing along the way. Between the entertaining hack and slash battles, helpful animal orbs, and mounts to ride, the game offers a deep gaming experience you are not likely to put down anytime soon. Animal orbs are friendly mini-animals that float behind you as you move. Each has their own additional ability, including a bat that gnaws on enemy heads and a seahorse that makes it easier to move through water. Mounts, like the chomping alligator you can ride atop, are even more useful.
The control scheme is easy to learn, thanks to a steadily increasing number of combos. Your battle moves are limited at first, but as you rank up, on-screen help details additional abilities and moves. The steady progression helps keep the battles fresh from start to finish, as do the character specific abilities. Each character gets their own set of magic attacks, meaning you will have a boatload of chances to play through the game. No, the game will not change that much, but either will how much fun you have. With each passing level, you have the ability to assign points to your character's four attributes. This is smartly handled at the end of each level to keep you involved in the action; rather than having you stop the action every few minutes to fiddle with a menu, a la Too Human.
If there is one gripe with the game, it is the way you can only carry one weapon at a time. The wealth of weapons will leave you wanting to experiment a bit, but the inability to bring more than one with you into levels hinders your chances. Since you can cycle through your smallish inventory with the bumper buttons, it feels like an annoying absence. Still, with all else that you can do in the game, it is a minor complaint. The boss battles are a blast, each with a unique and clever design all their own. There are plenty here that you are unlikely to forget anytime soon.
The game maintains the stylish cell shaded look they gave Alien Hominid, which is to say it is gorgeous and cartoony. The variety of locations and enemies is impressive as they come for a game its size. Their unique sense of humor is intact here, as well. Little things, like entering a giant frog's mouth to shop for weapons give are cute, and the bigger laughs are even better, like the tip of the cap to Terminator 2 in the end of a certain boss battle. The presentation of the level map is a sly nod to old school games like Super Mario Bros 3, as is much of the game's design. There is even a deer-riding sequence that will send chills down the spine of anyone old enough to remember breaking a controller over the speeder level of Battletoads. You cannot help but feel that this is a gushing love letter to side-scrolling beat em ups of years past.
As fun as it is as a single-player experience, the game gets better when played with friends. You have the option of using any combination of four players over Live or on the same console to play any of the modes. Again, the one you will spend the most time with is the story mode, though. The game plays out the same, but you are much slower to rank up with friends around to 'steal' your experience. It works well to keep the game challenging, even with friends around to help with the enemies. One hilarious difference comes after rescuing each princess, as gamers will have to battle out amongst themselves for the right to kiss her. Despite reports of rampant online issues, we only had one minor issue with lag, resulting in a disconnection from the Live players. With the exception of the one thirty-second problem, the game played like a champ.
Castle Crashers is a fantastic addition to XBLA, and a must-have for your collection. There are few games on the service that can match the depth here, and those that come close do not offer Live co-op.
