Review
Mini Fact-file
Platform: Xbox 360
Developed by: The Behemoth
Published By: The Behemoth/Microsoft
Released: August 27, 2008
Game Type: Scrolling Beat-Em-Up with RPG elements
Players: 1-4 (Offline and Online)
General Plot in Brief
You, being an all powerful knight of your kingdom, are sent on a quest to recover your kingdom’s jewel and to rescue (and kiss) the four Princesses that have been kidnapped. Time to crash some castles!
Graphics: 5/5
Castle Crashers is a visually appealing game done in the style of the artist known as Dan Paladin. This guy was also behind the game Alien Hominid, showing his art style of blocky, 2D characters. This is one of those styles that you will either love or hate, and I happen to like the simplicity of them. This game goes to prove you don’t need fancy 3D graphics to make a game look visually appealing. It is a known fact (I call it) that 2D games, when done properly, look better than most 3D games out there.
Also take not that, to my knowledge, this doesn’t use sprites that you might be typically used to seeing in other 2D games (like Metal Slug, for example). Everything in this game is hand drawn...that’s right, hand drawn. That seriously takes a lot of time and dedication to get them looking this good.
Sound: 5/5
Although this term might get thrown around a lot, the music in Castle Crashers is epic (well, most of it anyway). Also take into consideration that this music was made by the community at Newgrounds. Simply put, the music in this game wasn’t done by professionals, but by members of NG. As soon as you start up Castle Crashers, you will hear the title screen music, and boy does that sound amazing. It is pleasing to hear and also matches the theme of the game perfectly (being medieval). There is also not one level where the music sounds out of place, it all matches perfectly with the levels that have been created.
All your typical sounds are also thrown into the mix, like sword swinging, magic sounds, explosion...you know....all the usual stuff
Gameplay: 4/5
If you’ve ever played a scrolling Beat-em-up before, you will probably know what to expect....or so you would think. Castle Crashers seamlessly combines fighting and magic into ine package, and lets you switch between the two instantly. One minute you could be smacking your foe around with your weapon, and then you could unleash your magic strike to deliver a potentially fatal blow. This is basically all you will be doing though the 20+ levels that you will have to complete in order to recover the jewel that was stolen. You may be thinking that this is repetitive, which is correct, but what Castle Crashers manages to achieve is making you addicted to it, taunting you to complete “just one more levelâ€.
It manages to achieve this dedication in a number of ways. The most obvious way is achievements. As this game is from the Xbox Live Arcade, it offers 200 points to get, and these are varied in a sense. Although these are mostly alike, they do put you in certain situations. One achievement asks that you only use melee against a boss and one has you trying to escape a big rectangle hair thing (I don’t even know what it is, it has HUGE eyes, let me tell you that) while riding on the back of a deer (at least I think it’s a deer, let us call it “itâ€), the catch being you can’t crash.
The other way it manages to achieve this continued playability is the RPG element that has been included. As you deal damage, you will gain experience that will, in turn, level you up. Leveling up in itself doesn’t make you more powerful but when you get to the end of the level (or when you die) you will be presented a screen where you can “spend†the points that you get while levelling up. These stats do various different things. Strength raises attack power (obviously), Magic raises magical damage and recharge time (You will recover your magic over a period of time, that’s lucky considering mana potions don’t exist), Defense which increases your health and agility which increases your speed and ranged damage.
One interesting feature to take note about this is the Magic stat. While on the stat point screen, you’ll notice that some of the segments of the magic stat are coloured in a lighter colour then the rest. These are important points as it not only lets you do more damage, but also grants you new magical abilitys (or, in most cases, an extension on your current spell). By the time you the final lightly coloured bar, you’ll be jumping high into the air releasing a torrent of damaging magic spells.
Combat is easy to grasp in Castle Crashers. Pressing x (Yes, the blue button) will unleash a light attack while pressing y (the yellow) will unleash a heavy attack. Pressing the right trigger will surround you in an aura, allowing you to unleash magic spells by pressing y or b (red) and pressing the left trigger will allow you to block. Sound pretty simple so far, right....Anyway, the beauty of combat in this game is the ability to link combos together. As you level up, you will gain new melee combos for you to use. One such combo which is learned early on is a spinning air attack which deals low damage (in fact, I’ve only dealt two 1s with it). If done correctly, though, you can juggle your opponents in the air while you relentlessly smack them to death, while you’re in the air too. The first time you achieve this feat you’ll feel happy (or that might be just me, probably just me) but then it becomes almost routine, and indeed essential, to advancing though the levels in the game.
Now we’ve got that out the way, let’s move onto the bosses. Bosses are, as you would guess, the dudes you have to fight at the end of most levels. These bosses aren’t normal sized, oh no, their big sized, some of them seem Devil May Cry big. Anyway, you can’t just simply hit these bosses normally because, as bosses are, you’ll need a certain degree of strategy and/or luck and good levels. One particular boss is lightning fast and, after a bit, retreats to an organ which fire cannonballs at you. These make for interesting boss fights and indeed a worthy challenge to your all powerful knight
Some mini games have also been included into the main game. Once such example is a volleyball game which has you battling, with the ball, to get an item that you need to advance the game. This adds a certain element to the game which breaks the repetition that might have started to become a bit too repetitive, a break from the action if you will.
One other element that I deem a great quality is the humour. Although some of the humour might seem a bit crude, other things will make you smile, smirk or both. One such example is a boss, which is a catfish (Literally, it is a cat spliced with a HUGE fish, it even attacks with furballs!). There are some elements that people who have been at Newgrounds will get. I will not spoil that, as it’s the ending, which came as a huge surprise to me, although clues did begin to pop up nearer to the end of the game.
Lastly, I couldn’t go without mentioning your little companions, the Animal Orbs. These things act like a sidekick to you and provide you with useful traits. One animal orb helps you find buried treasure. Couple that with the weapons that are on offer (one weapon is an umbrella) and you have one hell of a game.
I would talk about Co-op mode, but I have yet to successfully connect to a game over Xbox Live, or have I invited friends round to play it. A patch is said to be in the works to remedy this problem and is likely to be completed before December (hopefully). I could talk about so much more on this game but, alas, time is money, or so they say
Lifespan Medium -> Long
Castle Crashers defiantly does have that addictive factor that will keep you hooked, but in all fairness, it is a relatively short game. This could be easily completed in under 10 hours, even by yourself...even quicker with friends.
The minigames included could help to make the game last longer but they can only go so far
Overall Verdict: 4/5 An Absolute Bargin
1200 Microsoft Points, considering the amount of detail that has gone into this game, is extremely cheap. Many retail games that are double the price can’t compete with this but, alas, the repetitive nature of Beat-em-ups, no matter how good they are, are always going to get to a stages where you just can’t play anymore. The connection problems have also dogged this game, which is essentially a Co-op experience. This hasn’t let most people achieve the true Castle Crashers experience, battling with friends
Mini Fact-file
Platform: Xbox 360
Developed by: The Behemoth
Published By: The Behemoth/Microsoft
Released: August 27, 2008
Game Type: Scrolling Beat-Em-Up with RPG elements
Players: 1-4 (Offline and Online)
General Plot in Brief
You, being an all powerful knight of your kingdom, are sent on a quest to recover your kingdom’s jewel and to rescue (and kiss) the four Princesses that have been kidnapped. Time to crash some castles!
Graphics: 5/5
Castle Crashers is a visually appealing game done in the style of the artist known as Dan Paladin. This guy was also behind the game Alien Hominid, showing his art style of blocky, 2D characters. This is one of those styles that you will either love or hate, and I happen to like the simplicity of them. This game goes to prove you don’t need fancy 3D graphics to make a game look visually appealing. It is a known fact (I call it) that 2D games, when done properly, look better than most 3D games out there.
Also take not that, to my knowledge, this doesn’t use sprites that you might be typically used to seeing in other 2D games (like Metal Slug, for example). Everything in this game is hand drawn...that’s right, hand drawn. That seriously takes a lot of time and dedication to get them looking this good.
Sound: 5/5
Although this term might get thrown around a lot, the music in Castle Crashers is epic (well, most of it anyway). Also take into consideration that this music was made by the community at Newgrounds. Simply put, the music in this game wasn’t done by professionals, but by members of NG. As soon as you start up Castle Crashers, you will hear the title screen music, and boy does that sound amazing. It is pleasing to hear and also matches the theme of the game perfectly (being medieval). There is also not one level where the music sounds out of place, it all matches perfectly with the levels that have been created.
All your typical sounds are also thrown into the mix, like sword swinging, magic sounds, explosion...you know....all the usual stuff
Gameplay: 4/5
If you’ve ever played a scrolling Beat-em-up before, you will probably know what to expect....or so you would think. Castle Crashers seamlessly combines fighting and magic into ine package, and lets you switch between the two instantly. One minute you could be smacking your foe around with your weapon, and then you could unleash your magic strike to deliver a potentially fatal blow. This is basically all you will be doing though the 20+ levels that you will have to complete in order to recover the jewel that was stolen. You may be thinking that this is repetitive, which is correct, but what Castle Crashers manages to achieve is making you addicted to it, taunting you to complete “just one more levelâ€.
It manages to achieve this dedication in a number of ways. The most obvious way is achievements. As this game is from the Xbox Live Arcade, it offers 200 points to get, and these are varied in a sense. Although these are mostly alike, they do put you in certain situations. One achievement asks that you only use melee against a boss and one has you trying to escape a big rectangle hair thing (I don’t even know what it is, it has HUGE eyes, let me tell you that) while riding on the back of a deer (at least I think it’s a deer, let us call it “itâ€), the catch being you can’t crash.
The other way it manages to achieve this continued playability is the RPG element that has been included. As you deal damage, you will gain experience that will, in turn, level you up. Leveling up in itself doesn’t make you more powerful but when you get to the end of the level (or when you die) you will be presented a screen where you can “spend†the points that you get while levelling up. These stats do various different things. Strength raises attack power (obviously), Magic raises magical damage and recharge time (You will recover your magic over a period of time, that’s lucky considering mana potions don’t exist), Defense which increases your health and agility which increases your speed and ranged damage.
One interesting feature to take note about this is the Magic stat. While on the stat point screen, you’ll notice that some of the segments of the magic stat are coloured in a lighter colour then the rest. These are important points as it not only lets you do more damage, but also grants you new magical abilitys (or, in most cases, an extension on your current spell). By the time you the final lightly coloured bar, you’ll be jumping high into the air releasing a torrent of damaging magic spells.
Combat is easy to grasp in Castle Crashers. Pressing x (Yes, the blue button) will unleash a light attack while pressing y (the yellow) will unleash a heavy attack. Pressing the right trigger will surround you in an aura, allowing you to unleash magic spells by pressing y or b (red) and pressing the left trigger will allow you to block. Sound pretty simple so far, right....Anyway, the beauty of combat in this game is the ability to link combos together. As you level up, you will gain new melee combos for you to use. One such combo which is learned early on is a spinning air attack which deals low damage (in fact, I’ve only dealt two 1s with it). If done correctly, though, you can juggle your opponents in the air while you relentlessly smack them to death, while you’re in the air too. The first time you achieve this feat you’ll feel happy (or that might be just me, probably just me) but then it becomes almost routine, and indeed essential, to advancing though the levels in the game.
Now we’ve got that out the way, let’s move onto the bosses. Bosses are, as you would guess, the dudes you have to fight at the end of most levels. These bosses aren’t normal sized, oh no, their big sized, some of them seem Devil May Cry big. Anyway, you can’t just simply hit these bosses normally because, as bosses are, you’ll need a certain degree of strategy and/or luck and good levels. One particular boss is lightning fast and, after a bit, retreats to an organ which fire cannonballs at you. These make for interesting boss fights and indeed a worthy challenge to your all powerful knight
Some mini games have also been included into the main game. Once such example is a volleyball game which has you battling, with the ball, to get an item that you need to advance the game. This adds a certain element to the game which breaks the repetition that might have started to become a bit too repetitive, a break from the action if you will.
One other element that I deem a great quality is the humour. Although some of the humour might seem a bit crude, other things will make you smile, smirk or both. One such example is a boss, which is a catfish (Literally, it is a cat spliced with a HUGE fish, it even attacks with furballs!). There are some elements that people who have been at Newgrounds will get. I will not spoil that, as it’s the ending, which came as a huge surprise to me, although clues did begin to pop up nearer to the end of the game.
Lastly, I couldn’t go without mentioning your little companions, the Animal Orbs. These things act like a sidekick to you and provide you with useful traits. One animal orb helps you find buried treasure. Couple that with the weapons that are on offer (one weapon is an umbrella) and you have one hell of a game.
I would talk about Co-op mode, but I have yet to successfully connect to a game over Xbox Live, or have I invited friends round to play it. A patch is said to be in the works to remedy this problem and is likely to be completed before December (hopefully). I could talk about so much more on this game but, alas, time is money, or so they say
Lifespan Medium -> Long
Castle Crashers defiantly does have that addictive factor that will keep you hooked, but in all fairness, it is a relatively short game. This could be easily completed in under 10 hours, even by yourself...even quicker with friends.
The minigames included could help to make the game last longer but they can only go so far
Overall Verdict: 4/5 An Absolute Bargin
1200 Microsoft Points, considering the amount of detail that has gone into this game, is extremely cheap. Many retail games that are double the price can’t compete with this but, alas, the repetitive nature of Beat-em-ups, no matter how good they are, are always going to get to a stages where you just can’t play anymore. The connection problems have also dogged this game, which is essentially a Co-op experience. This hasn’t let most people achieve the true Castle Crashers experience, battling with friends