Review: Castle Crashers

Castle Crashers was part of 2008's "Summer of Arcade" initiative where Microsoft chunked all the high profile XBLA games together for the three months of Summer. I bought three of the 5 or 6 games offered during that time: Geometry Wars 2, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, and Castle Crashers. I had followed 'Crashers for years, all the way to when it was known by its beta name "Ye Olde Side Scroller". I had loved the developer's previous game "Alien Hominid" and assumed it could only get better from there. But you know what happens when you assume...

Gameplay
Castle Crashers is a throwback to the beat-em-up genre that was so popular in the 80s and 90s. Games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Game, Double Dragon, and Streets of Rage were all well revered beat-em-ups.  These games relied heavily on the 2-4 person co-op gameplay of beating up waves and waves of thugs and mudnicks, but were either extremely boring or excruciatingly difficult to play alone. Castle Crashers fits in that mold to a T, but adds a few little spices and extras to keep it fresh and modern. 

 

Character select screen

Aside from the expected walk-to-the-right-and-punch-everything gameplay, Castle Crashers also has some light RPG elements woven in. As you work your way through each level, every hit you land will net you experience points. Max out your experience gauge and your character will level up - this will allow you to upgrade your attack, magic, defense or agility by a point or two. The problem with this system is that you cannot implement those upgrades until you: A) die and restart the level or B) Finish the level outright. So as is the case with most RPGs you have to spend time intentionally leveling up your character or 'grinding'. In Castle Crashers, you will be forced - forced - to replay entire levels because your character wasn't strong enough. You can grind your character in Arena style events, but those are even more tedious than the levels themselves. So the pattern looks something like this.

- Enter level
- Level up! Yay! 
- Get about halfway through
- Die
- Upgrade stats
- Try again
- Level up again
- Die on the boss
- Try again
- Next level

It's extremely boring and provides absolutely no motivation to see the game through to its conclusion. Once you reach about level 25, this pattern loosens up a little bit and you're usually able to beat a level on the first go-round, but early in the game its a huge issue that makes the game drag.

 

All the unlockable dudes

On the other side of the coin, however, this game is a completionists dream. There are 30 characters, 70 weapons, and 30 animal orbs to unlock. Each character has unique attributes and magic spells, animal orbs are stat boosting assistants and the weapons range from something as silly as a fish to something as awesome as a flaming lightsaber. If you are someone who loves to invest the time to 100% a game, I could think of nothing better than Castle Crashers. Collecting everything however requires a SERIOUS investment. Most playable characters unlocks require you to beat the game with another character, while weapons and animal orbs are kind of random find-what-you-can. Throw in the fact that every new character you unlock starts at level 1, and you have a 100+ hour game on your hands.

Now to be fair, I was playing Castle Crashers by myself. The game is designed around playing 4 player. The game's subtitle is "4-Player Adventure". I am certain that playing with friends is much more fun than playing alone, but if you don't expect to have anyone to play with, don't expect to be thrilled about seeing the game through to the end.

Presentation
One thing I can't take away from the developers is the presentation. The lead artist Dan Paladin gets a full screen credit at the beginning of the game and he deserves every bit of it. The game's beautiful, hand drawn art delivers one of the most visually unique and stunning experiences on the 360 - downloadable game or not. Characters animate fluidly, enemies react to player movements in fun ways, the bosses are meticulously detailed and usually enormous beasts, magic spells and items pop and whizz with appropriate zing - its rapturously enjoyable just to watch. It's certainly a showcase game for your HD setup - while games like Gears of War show gritty detail and realistic models, Castle Crashers shows how bright and vibrant an HD game can be.

 

Huge, stylized bosses

 
The music is appropriately epic as well. Huge, swelling, orchestrated pieces accompany the big fight scenes while light, plucky tunes escort the character select and item shop areas. Looking at the credits last night, it appears that the music was a real collaborative effort with sound credits going to about a dozen different composers and bands and yet they all were able to deliver an end product that felt cohesive and whole.

Stuff I Loved: 

•  Ridiculously ornate visuals. It's clear a lot of time went into character models and refining and re-refining these environments and characters
• Old-school rebirth done right - just enough of the old sprinkled with the new to make it work with a modern market
• Light tone. In the days of Call of Duty and Infamous, its nice to see a game that doesn't take itself too seriously. Lots of in jokes and nerd-humor. 

Stuff I Hated: 

• Leveling system. Giving only one life with no mid-level checkpoints is just plain mean.
• Tedious progression rate. For all it does right, its one of the most poorly paced games of this generation. Boredom and tedium set in quickly.
• Monotonous gameplay. They threw in enough stuff to make it interesting, but really it comes down to mashing the attack button and they didn't switch up the pace enough to make me want to see more. 

I tend to support smaller developers and seek out the great games under the Halo and Guitar Hero radar. This is certainly one of those games. I love these guys' motivation and drive to make a good game for people like me. And while I wasn't the biggest fan of the game, there is a legion of die-hards out there who are certainly justified in loving it.

Buy Castle Crashers


Review in Ten Words or Less:
Beat-em-up done right, but pacing is off.


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