Castle Crashers

This past weekend I stumbled upon a little game on the Xbox Live Arcade called Castle Crashers. For the small price of 1,200 (about 15 bucks in real life) marketplace place you can download this little title and begin going medieval on some CPU ass.

Before you start your quest you have the choice of four different characters each with a different magic power: The Green Knight who shots what looks like toxic sludge, Red Knight whose power is lighting, Blue Knight who is basically Sub-Zero, and the Orange Knight with the ability to shot fire.

The game starts off pretty funny with your character rocking out before getting interrupted. Now from what I can gather your mission is to go and get back the Princess’s that we taken and this giant crystal that was taken by a guy that looks like (draws a blank).

As you progress through the game your character level’s up allowing you to add points to increase their strength, magic, agility, and defense. You are also taught new combos, pick up different weapons that can affects any of your abilities, and have little animal orbs follow you each have their own way of helping you. Any time you want to change weapons or animals all you have to do it head back to the blacksmith and take what you want.

Now as stated before I really haven’t played my heart out because it was Labor Day weekend and my liver needed to be punished. However the map is very Super Mario World 2/3ish and very easy to navigate. Along the way you can stop off at stores to buy new weapons, animal orbs, bombs, and health potion/pb&j sandwich’s that help you grow stronger. Also if you want to try your hand in a arena battle they have they in just about each “world,” but keep in mind they will make you mad and if you win then hey a new hidden character!

The enemies get stronger as you progress through each world and that will help you decide which animal orb (rammy or batty can be helpful) to take along. Bosses aren’t going to cause you to play for 24 straight hours to beat them and if they do then you may want to hang up your controller right now.

My only real problem with the game is that it freeze’s when you try to play on Xbox Live or has a problem finding games. Microsoft and the developers are working on a patch right now to fix said problems and I hope they get out soon because playing this by yourself can get a little boring.

All and all this is a must buy for anyone who needs something new to play until The Force Unleashed comes out (12 days) or enjoys some pretty sweet and funny graphics.

Graphics – 4/5
Controls – 4/5
Fun Factor – 4/5