Castle Crashers - XBox360

My First experience with the X-Box360 was with Castle Crashers. A game that I had heard alot about, seeing has it took 4 years to be made and the game is entirely designed in Flash. So it has a style that I really like, not the crappy symbol flash, but the big thick line fully animated flash.

It was one of the few games that I played entirely with a group of friends. So finishing a game with a group of friends is much different than finishing a game by oneself.

Premise of the game, you can choose between 4 knights, each with their own set of magic powers, fire, lighting, poison and ice, but you unlock more has you go through the game. You then hack and slash and magic and combo your way to the end where you have to fight insane bosses.

I gotta say that the game play with a a group of 4 people really is fun and adds alot to a gaming experience, but there are a few downfalls has well. But the good first. Like I said befor, I really like the look and style of the game. The story is simple and entertaining. The upgrading your characters is fun, finding all the different weapons and animal sidekicks are all great additions to a game.

The Bad, The backgrounds of the levels are very heavy on design elements, alot, and I mean alot of detail. So much so, that on certain levels, the flower field and the garbage level. When enemies and players meet on the battle field and all the FX start fo fly, I honestly don't have a clue where I am. Only until I am hit and shot across the room by a baddies do I go,"OH, there I am...dead on the ground"

Playing in the foreground, the game has it so you can control your guy like all the old arcade fighting games, ninja turtles, x-men, Simpson's etc. You can move in and out of the foreground, but holy hell does this ever make it hard to judge what level the bosses are on. Its a little easier with the smaller enemies, but alot of the time, I be jumping my head off and swinging my sword around and thinking I am beating the crap outta the boss, because I see hit FX, only to find out I was on the wrong plain and it was actually my team mates doing all the damage. While I looked like an idiot jumping and wailing my sword in the sky.



Those were my only 2 gripes with the game. It is kinda short, but you can go back and search for my animal side kicks, try and find all the weapons and unlock all the extra characters. And of course the achievements. But I don't like the achievements on the 360 too much. I don't like the idea of points. I rather a gold, silver trophy and yes I know that they are worth points too. I just like the trophy idea.

Overall, it was a decent game, I think the 14.99 is a little much, I would rather it be 9.99, but that's just being super picky. I guess they have to make money on something that took them 4 years to make. Give the demo a try, if you like that, then the rest of the game is pretty much the same, just with all the bells and whistles.

6.5/10