We spent some quality time on this new XBLA game today, and developer Behemoth has another hit on their hands. From crazy black squiggle monsters to giant hairball spitting river blocking cats to little jawa-esque medieval thieves, this game has it all, and then some. And when we say “then some,” we generally mean poo-squirting deer and those bizarre, giant black rabbit monsters chasing them.
We put the game through its paces, both downloading the demo and then unlocking the full game, which set us back a cool 1200 MS points ($15 US). We have to say that it was worth it. This is button mashing extraordinaire.
Even with the few single-player glitches, and a horrible online experience due mainly to server issues, we can say with confidence: buy the game.
Story
Apparently, you are some sort of knight errant who is nearby when bad guys threaten the kingdom and, naturally, grab the princesses. You were hanging out in the local pub banging your head, when you figure out it’s your job is to go into the big bad world and kick major ass, using your melee weapons, your trusty arrow, and your magic powers, given to you with your special color. You have to get through all the levels and bad guys, and get the girls back.
There are four stock characters – orange, red, blue and green (The little orangey yellow Alien Hominid shows up if you’ve bought that game from the same developer, and there are 22 more unlockable characters). Each color has a special power; whether it’s fire, poison, ice or electricity, the effect is the same.
Mechanics, GOOD Mechanics
This is a button masher, pure and simple. But that’s not to say there aren’t a wealth of clever combos and juggling skills to learn. The beauty of it is that there are RPG elements to this fairly simple recipe: as you kill more enemies, you get XP. More XP, you level up. When you level up, you get points you can spend on one of the four character attributes: Strength, Defense, Magic, and Agility. In addition, there are weapons to find around the game that have different characteristics as well. You might get a killer hammer that adds +1 to your strength attribute, but -1 to your agility attribute.
There are also animal orbs you can find that will follow you around, and do things for you. The little owl finds you hidden fruit (health tokens), the little ram will knock down those pesky bad guys, etc. These animals all hang out at the nurse’s house, which is near the blacksmith, where all the weapons that you found during the game are stored, too. So, if you get to a particularly difficult level, you can run back to the blacksmith’s area, walk into the monsters mouth, past its tonsils, and grab a weapon that’s better suited to the task. This takes the game at least a notch above your standard kill them all button masher, which seemed to be what Alien Hominid HD was all about.
Options
Between the levels there’s a World Map, which allows you to move around on it, a la Super Mario Brothers. You can move forward and back to levels you’ve completed at least once. Some of these spaces are stores, where you can buy health potions and weapons, while still other spots are Arenas, where you can battle the enemies typical of that area of the World Map to level up. There’s also a mini game, All You Can Quaff, where you press button combos as directed to stuff your knight-loving face with food. Cute, fun, but not something I’ll spend much time with.
Ranging Difficulty
One of my biggest beefs with games at times is their ridiculously steep difficulty curve. Castle Crashers seems to have that covered, too. Each time I hit a level that just destroyed me, killed my little orange guy in seconds flat, I found that if I kept trying to get through the level, I gained XP. Even if I died. So, at a certain point, I leveled up, and got to add points to my character’s attributes. Which made me a stronger character, who could then beat back the baddies just a little more effectively. It was as if the game paid me back for my persistence with just a little bit of advantage. Of course, the next level usually beat the crap out of me again, needing even more persistence and patience, so my inner hardcore gamer was pretty satisfied.
Multiplayer
This is a big feature for me and my family. I want to be able to include my kids in playing videogames, without having to subject them to lots of realistic blood and gore, of course. This game is a perfect match. It allows for up to four player local action, turning my single player experience into a total slam-bam fun fest rivaling my favorite multiplayer arcade game, Gauntlet. Having 3 people playing on the screen at once, sharing duties and looting together was just the best fun. Add to that the ability to turn off the gore (even cartoon gore can be too much – it’s one of the reasons I didn’t buy Alien Hominid HD — too gory for the kiddos), and this game is a perfect match for my gaming family.
The online multiplayer has a quick match system, as well as a hosting and custom game option, which we didn’t get too much time to explore due to some internal XBLA network issues. I’m guessing the game was the success that their servers weren’t quite ready for. The short experience we did have online was fun, for much the same reason the local is – it’s much more fun to play with a group of people than alone. When I played a bit of co-op with the Evil Editor, we got to laugh at the goofiness and silly poop jokes that flew by in the background. Fun to have two people watch the scenery and comment on it.
Art Design
This game comes across like a mix between Invader Zim and a Ren & Stimpy cartoon. There’s an obvious similarity to the Alien Hominid games, as the artist and studio is the same. The artwork and character design is spot on, keeping me entertained and never bored. A game this consistently repetitive could get boring quickly, but the supersaturated colors, cell shading, and quirky character designs kept me looking around the next corner to see what new fantastic bizarre creature would show up.
I honestly have to say that they topped themselves every time. The big hairy head with the pop eyes was quickly replaced in my affections when the giant water cat came onscreen, which was even then quickly left for the love of tiny little polar bears with red paw prints stenciled onto their ears and pennant flags.
Yes, I said pennant flags.
Music
The music is at turns whimsical and inspiring, goofy and satirically cliche. It’s a perfect fit to the artwork and game design as a whole. From the little jazzy guitar work of the Blacksmith area to the overbearing horns of the “big scary monster” level, each works with the specific world/stage in the game to bring it that much more in line with the entire experience. It’s catchy, doesn’t get in the way, and carries forward the game experience. Pretty darn near perfect, I’d say.
The Glitches
There’s never a perfect anything, and Castle Crashers is no exception. There were a couple of levels in the single-player campaign that just stopped on me, forcing me to restart the game and re-do the level. And on occasion when you’re blocking, the surrounding enemies seem to just stutter-step towards you.
Bottom Line
It’s been said here at Games Are Evil many times, in posts and comments: these downloadable games are rivaling the bigger shrinkwrap ones for our attention. I’m hard pressed to spend $60 on one game when I can spend $60 on four, at this quality. Games like Braid and PixelJunk Eden and now Castle Crashers have really raised the bar on game developers everywhere. For a service that some saw as a way for game companies to infuse a little cash into back catalog and franchise arcade games, the XBLA, WiiWare, and PSN concept has really come into its own.
If you like side-scrollers with lots of button mashing, have a quirky sense of humor and want to be impressed with graphic and musical greatness, look no further than Castle Crashers, even at the $15 pricepoint.
UPDATE: This image pretty much confirms the online difficulty we’ve been having :-)
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