First Impressions: Castle Crashers

by: Chuck - posted: 8/27/2008 9:50:00 PM

John and I spent about 90 minutes playing through Castle Crashers tonight and so far the game is really living up to expectations.  The biggest thing I noticed is that the game is closer to Golden Axe than TMNT (an error on my part), and there are even a few sequences that are directly lifted from the classic Sega game. 

The game is a straight beat 'em up with a small RPG layer grafted on top of it.  You gain XP as you play and as you level up you can put points towards your strength, magic, health, and agility.  This gives you a lot of options in how you want to play the game.  Personally I loaded up on strength and magic which while making me a stronger fighter, annoyed John to no end as he had to constantly revive me (this is done via a sliding scale ala the reload game in Gears of War).  You can also pick up different weapons and pets as you play the game which alters your play strategy as well.

So far I'm having a lot of fun with the game and the online play is fairly solid.  We did hit a little bit of lag and had the game crash on us once but after that it was smooth sailing.  The art style and animation are top notch and there are a lot of cute moments in the game.  The humor is a little churlish at times (the game confirms that bears do poop in the woods) but there's a lot of fun to be had in the game.  Like Alien Hominid before it the game is pure old school game mechanics with a few new touches tossed in for flavor.  There's a lot of depth to the game as well as you can play as any of the four knights or any of the unlockable characters in the game.  Each one has different abilities which adds a lot to the replayability of the game.  Plus it's a done of fun to just to beat the crap out of each other in the arenas and after defeating bosses.

I don't have a problem recommending the game to people who are looking for a fun party game.  The fact that you can mix local players with online players is a nice touch.  I do wish they had added drop in/drop out support to the game but it's not that hard to exit the game and start a new one with everyone in it (it autosaves your progress so you just have to restart the level you are playing).  So far it feels like Castle Crashers is living up to the hype.