| Author | Review |
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Runch Optimus
216,001
TA Score for this game: 201
Posted on 23 April 09 at 00:40 |
This review has 50 positive votes and 6 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Castle Crashers is a side-scrolling beat em’ up that combines intense multiplayer action with a unique sense of humor and excellent artistic design.
Story:
As the story begins, an evil wizard invades your peaceful kingdom, steals the King’s magic crystal, kidnaps the four princesses, and unleashes hordes of barbarians upon the people. It’s up to you (and your faithful knight friends) to defeat the evil wizard and free the damsels in distress.
Yes, Castle Crashers has an entirely predictable story, but it’s one we all love. Thankfully the story in no way, shape, or form diminishes from the overall fun of the game.
Gameplay:
Those who recall the classic arcade game Golden Axe will feel instantly at home with Castle Crashers. You have a light and a heavy attack, a basic magic attack, and you can block and jump. As you progress through the game, you can learn additional magic attacks, as well as the ability to use more complex combos consisting of mixed light and heavy melee attacks. Although the controls are simple, mastering them will take practice. In addition, as you progress through the game, you will have the option to equip different weapons, use several items, and attach a number of familiars to your character.
The enemies you encounter along the way are varied and cleverly designed. The bosses, in particular, come in all shapes and sizes and will not only test your skill but ensure you have a riotously good time to boot. The difficulty is well balanced so that the game is constantly challenging but never feels impossible.
Castle Crashers is meant to be enjoyed in 4 player co-op. When the game was first released, there was quite a fiasco with the online multiplayer not working properly. This has since been fixed, allowing for online play, but Castle Crashers really shines when played 4-player locally with friends. After an epic 15 minute battle with some of the bosses, you and your buddies will feel like you just went to war together.
In addition, the game features a couple other modes, but the jewel here is in the co-op story mode.
Graphics/Sound/Music:
This is the category that really separates Castle Crashers from the pack. The graphic design of the levels, characters, and enemies is all superb, coming at you with a unique visual style that you will either love or hate (but most likely love).
The sound effects and music are equally impressive. The intense action is superbly complemented by the sound, and the music is fitted perfectly to the mood of the particular scene. Many of the boss fights, in particular, are enhanced by a great musical score.
Value:
At $15, Castle Crashers is one of the more expensive XBLA games, especially for a game that probably takes no more than a few hours to beat, but it is absolutely worth it. The intense action is something that you won’t easily find anywhere else, and with collectibles to be found, a number of characters to unlock, and with an insane mode to boot, you should find plenty of reasons to come back to the game in the future.
Achievements:
The achievements for Castle Crashers are mostly fun and varied. You get some for playing the game in different ways, some for collecting items, some for accomplishing unique tasks, and some for playing different online multiplayer modes. Overall they give the gamer a taste of just about everything the game has to offer.
Final Thoughts:
Castle Crashers is what it is, a wacky and intense beat em’ up that lasts just long enough to satisfy your appetite but not long enough to get you bored. In terms of gameplay, Castle Crashers doesn’t bring a ton of innovation into the genre, but everything that Castle Crashers does, it does very well.
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HendoTheViking
87,872
TA Score for this game: 197
Posted on 09 April 10 at 13:35, Edited on 09 April 10 at 13:43 |
This review has 23 positive votes and 5 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Castle Crashers reviewed by Chris Henderson.
I downloaded castle crashers earlier this year, as I was looking for a game that I could just pick up and play when I got too infuriated with what ever game I was playing at the time. Well I can say in my opinion I made a good decision.
Castle Crashers is a side scrolling Slash em up, which reminds me of Golden Axe, but with more gore. It is simple story, bad guy steals magic crystal, and then his minions abduct four princesses for good measure. You set out as one of four Knights Green, Red, Blue and orange (Power Rangers anyone??) to rescue them and retrieve the crystal. Each Knight has a lethal arsenal at their disposal, elemental magic is one when at higher levels is really handy. You also have choices of melee weapons (some of which vary from a lollipop to some major butt kicking swords) and bows + arrows (in my opinion pretty useless).
You also have pet orbs at you beck and call, each one gives the knight a different advantage, Monkey gives you extra experience, the owl finds food to restore your health and a psycho looking bear which just tries to kill anything. The game has a tinge of RPG to it, as your knights level up you can increase there base skills, which improve there attack, magic, speed and bowman ship.
Each level is brightly coloured and easy to manoeuvre round; the game play is smooth and easy to grasp, with it being a side scrolling game you always know which way to head. The story although pretty linear is easy to get into and to want to finish. The enemies are not going to try and ambush you and attack while your not watching, but they do come en-masse, you get a good variance of enemies with different skills and techniques, so you have to learn the best way to handle them. Boss battles vary from really easy to stupidly hard. But overall a joy to play and it has replay-ability as there are two DLC which add new characters, weapons and pet orbs.
The game also boasts two mini games, the first is an arena, where you can go all out and slaughter friends at will. The other is all you can quaff, which is a button tapping eating game. Its fun to play with friends when you have got tired of slaughtering.
Castle crashers can be played in single player or co-op locally, but it can also be played through X-BOX Live with three other players. This leads to hours of fun and for a simple game it excels in that area. You can literally pick it up and enjoy it. I would recommend this game to people who enjoy multiplayer games.
To me there is no wonder it was voted XBLA game of the year 2008.
Thanks for reading
Chris Henderson
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Mattayama
Posted on 06 January 10 at 13:14
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This review has 23 positive votes and 7 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Castle Crashers Review
Nothing says cooperation like slicing and dicing hordes of odd enemies.
Personally i think that this is the best arcade game to be released on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
Easy controls; tons of unlockable items; fun for all gamer levels; great value for the price.
Cons: Humor is a bit too juvenile at times; online play is unstable; extensive play could easily result in sore hands.
Suggested for: Couples, teenagers, people obsessed with collecting things Games that are designed to be played with more than one person are growing in popularity, but the majority of these games still find players competing against one another rather than playing the game together as a team. Luckily, Castle Crashers puts a laser-sharp focus on cooperative gameplay, offering an experience that can be enjoyed by couples and groups of friends, whether you’re sitting on the same couch or across the country from each other.
With a cartoony art style and some really creative enemy designs, Castle Crashers delivers a silly, light-hearted gaming experience that can be played no matter what your gaming ability. The game pits you and your friends as knights tasked with tracking down an evil wizard and rescuing your kingdom’s princesses; to do this, you much battle your way through horde after horde of enemies, ranging from other knights and barbarians to skeletons and evil, cultish-looking teddy bears.
The gameplay at its core is super simple. You move with the analog stick and press either X or Y to attack with your weapon. That’s really all you need to know to play the game. But players looking for a more sophisticated experience can easily add to their strategy by using items, magical attacks and unlockable attack combinations. Each character also has the ability to have an animal follow them into battle, which can do everything from helping to attack enemies to increasing your health or the amount of experience you gain during battles. And while you can play through the regular story mode alone, it’s much easier and much more fun to have the help of at least one other person.
Besides the main story mode, the game has two small competitive modes that can be played locally or against others on Xbox Live, but the real depth of creativity and fun gameplay comes from the main mode.
One drawback is that the humor, while often just silly, can get too juvenile in certain places and will likely have you rolling your eyes. There are also some problems if you try to play over Xbox Live. You may find it hard to find a competitive match and your connection may drop unexpectedly during cooperative play. However, the developer is aware of this issue and promises an update to the game as soon as possible. The only other problem is that the constant tapping of the buttons may make your hands a little sore if you play for an extended period of time -- but then, that’s true with a lot of games.
Nevertheless, Castle Crashers is a really great game, and on top of all its other great qualities, even though its 1200 MSP. It’s really tough to go wrong with this one.
Publisher The Behemoth
Developer The Behemoth |
DaBlackAlbino
172,775
TA Score for this game: 315
Posted on 10 May 13 at 00:44, Edited on 10 May 13 at 13:17 |
 This review has 10 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Synopsis:
Castle Crashers is an epic action adventure side-scrolling RPG which hosts a generous 20+ in- game levels, 2-4 player online/local co-op, 2-4 player PvP combat, 99 levels of stat progression and once completed, an insane mode which yields increased EXP to level your characters up with and keep you playing even longer, for an XBLA title it’s a generous package which packs a feature-filled punch, so much so it’s up there with the best of them on the Xbox Live Arcade, oozing tons and tons of fun, originality and importantly for that all important bang for your buck – replayability.
Castle Crashers is a game which loosely takes place in a medieval setting. The story’s premise is simple and you may have come across it somewhere before (*cough*, Mario, *cough*) the princesses of your home town alongside an extremely generic looking crystal are kidnapped from the castle by a random dark looking minion who appears to corrupt the crystal (indicated rather subtly and non-vocally at the start of the game by its changing of colour to red from yellow) before said evil antagonist flies off with both your booty and your kingdom’s noblewomen. The king of the castle (no pun intended) then sends off his 4 best knights, the red, blue, green and orange knights to get back his crystal and his princesses, however it’s important to mention for gamers of a solitary nature that you don't have the other knights accompany you in this quest unless you're in co-op mode, so just how many knights the king sends to get his princesses back is dependent on how many players are in the active game session.
Castle Crashers is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, the emphasis is on fun and this is made evident throughout the game, if it’s not the immediate give away that is the game’s art style, it can be seen in the goofiness of the game’s enemies and their attack animations, in the story/game ending and in the separate mode “All You Can Quaff”, All You Can Quaff is a multiplayer mini-game where 4 players partake in an all you can eat contest and compete to see who has the quickest hands and the biggest mouths, essentially aiming to pile in as much f*cking food as possible in a time quicker than that of the other contestants. The player who is victorious is to be doused in confetti and that’s the end of that bright little saga, however if you manage it 20 times then something “special” happens, you earn an achievement. The game mode is almost completely pointless in and of itself, but it does produce mindless fun for those looking to bring on chronic onset arthritis or engage in some rage-induced button bashing. Think of those hot dog eating contests they have in America, the game mode is much like that – but without water to aid digestion and the hot dogs have been replaced by rather healthier yet equally obscene, humongous fruits instead.
Castle Crashers offers a lot of customisability for an XBLA title with well over 50 weapons, 99 player levels, 20+ in-game levels, 10+ playable characters and around 20 pets (also called animal orbs) to augment your character in various shapes and sizes with a range of differing powers and abilities, their utilisation of course based upon your strategy. Each character has not only a different appearance, but a different magic alignment, as characters do not share levels this means if you're regretting your choice with the default Green Knight who has poison powers and you're at level 30 but you like the look of the Fire magic the Orange Knight has, you’ll need to play a separate game and start from level 1 as the Orange Knight to enjoy the range of powers he has to offer thus encouraging players to complete the title a number of times by providing a fresh gameplay experience with each character.
On top of this is the world map free roam element the game encompasses, once a level is unlocked it can be replayed at any point by simply walking around the world map and choosing the area you want to enter by pressing A on the areas corresponding circle on the map, a simple but welcome freedom which allows players to replay their favourite levels as often as possible without being subjected to linearity.
Play or avoid?
Any expectations you typically have of an XBLA title are expectations that Castle Crashers will more than surpass. Castle Crashers is a distinguished cut above the rest in comparison to other XBLA titles out there and I'd go as far to say it’s a “AAA XBLA game” one of those rare games that’s actually worthy of its 1,200MSP price tag. The game is fun played alone, offering enough customisation via pets, weapons and unique levels/environments to not grow stale, but when it really comes to life is in the presence of a group of friends, invite 1-3 friends in and the on-screen action intensifies even further, leading to hectic battles, more enemies/action and the ensuing fights over money and healing item drops that accompanies all of that.
Run-down:
Visuals: 8/10
Goofy, colourful and cutesy are words which adequately describe the graphics in Castle Crashers, the visuals aren't head-turning but neither are they a sight for sore eyes. For what the game tries to be and the experience it aims to provide the visuals more than adequately depict a wacky world obsessed with rescuing princesses. The game’s graphics are uniquely drawn and have their own art style going on which is what makes the game so fresh to look at. Castle Crashers on a visual level at least separates itself from everything else out there and this is where it earns the bulk of the points awarded in this category.
Sound: 9/10
The sound is incredibly feature rich, each levels background music has been carefully thought out and matches the theme and environment the level is set in, for example: the desert levels have background music with a distinct Middle Eastern vibe, eliciting a mixture of snake charm sound and bongos whilst you gallivant across the desert whilst the Ice World sounds like something of a trance rave downplayed with some loud ever-present shakers/maracas to try and give the place an accelerating yet cold theme. The world map tune (important, because you spend a lot of time there) is a jovial, merry theme which supports the idea you’re a chivalrous knight questing to save princesses in all its vibrancy. The sound effects befit every action you take, each swing of your weapon sounding incredibly deep and satisfying (no innuendo intended) and magic spells contain all the mystical and moody elements you’d come to expect of something powered on the intangible and esoteric.
Gameplay: 8/10
The gameplay is quite fluid but due to the decision to depict the game with the 2D art style it has (it’s not actually a 2D game, it’s a game in a 3D environment using 2D images) it can often be very awkward to work out if you're on the same vertical line (x coordinate) as the enemy is, the graphics lending massively to the frustration which is trying to have your depth perception accurately gauge whether you need to move a little bit up or a little bit down to hit the enemy which appears without more rigorous inspection, to be right in front of you! Aside from this, the gameplay is fun, if not repetitive button bashing. The ability to juggle enemies in the air as well as the massively varied number of environments and variation of enemies you come across, despite the simple game mechanics, stops the base gameplay from becoming too boring and thus despite its astute simplicity does not becoming too overwhelmingly monotonous.
Originality: 7/10
I always find originality to be a hard thing to rate because it’s interpretation is almost always subjective, what one person considers original another person may not, essentially nearly everything you see today in our world is the borrowing of ideas from somewhere else, be they movies, games, mythologies or religious stories and just amalgamating and presenting those ideas in a different way, using a different medium to deliver a new experience which due to its roots and themes, feel a little bit familiar. Castle Crashers is no exception to this preconception. Most gamers have rescued princesses and crystals before (Mario, Final Fantasy NES/SNES era) and there’s no real deep story or fresh game mechanics we haven’t seen before. However, the art style is unique and there aren’t many side-scrolling RPGs on the Xbox Live Arcade which support 4 player online co-op, so this is hard to rate, but after some deliberation I feel earnestly it deserves the score it has earned for itself here, as a fan of the title I’d really like to score it higher than a 7, but cannot justify that.
Overall Score: 32/40 – Awesome
If you enjoyed reading this then check out my blog here on TrueAchievements which can be accessed here or head on over to my publication to find more of my writings at http://dablackalbino.com
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