Castle Crashers: Good Game or Awesome Game?
September 21, 2008 12:22 am Games for Fun
A friend of mine who does contract art work for various studios sends me links to gametrailers.com every now and then. He’s big into old-school and arcade games and he was super excited about Castle Crashers (CC). I watched the video and wasn’t initially impressed; I thought it looked okay but there was so much stuff going on it seemed too chaotic to play. However, in the video they mentioned CC had four player co-op. I’m a sucker for co-op so I decided to give it a shot.
As it turns out, CC is pretty awesome. In fact, one question I get asked often is “which arcade game should I get, CC or Braid?” I always say CC just out of personal preference. I prefer action games over puzzle games. If I had to compare them, I’d say while CC isn’t terribly innovative, it blends a lot of “old school” mechanics into a really well done package. The overall experience was more fun and memorable for me than Braid.
Enough of the Braid comparisons, get both. CC is awesome for a whole slew of reasons. Four player co-op rocks. The art style is awesome. The scripting is incredible (the best I’ve seen in an XBLA game). The game play is addicting and rewarding. Leveling up characters and finding new items is always welcome. The music and sounds are great.
What isn’t awesome about the game? CC needed more time in QA before going out the door. The game has a few major bugs, including one that removes all your gold, weapons and items from your character (which I ran into myself). A different bug resets your characters back to level one. Plus, its tough to get a game going over Live since there are major connection issues. However, the game is so good that you end up risking encountering those bugs just so you can play some more.
I only have a few gameplay issues with CC. There’s these “orbs” which are cute animals creatures that float around you and give you some small bonus or ability. The problem is that most of them aren’t that useful. For example, the one that gives you a high defense, or the one that makes getting XP accumulate faster are much more useful than say, the orb that find fruit for you every now and then. One idea to improve this in the future would have been to customize your own orb, or maybe the ability level up orbs.
Melee is also much more useful than magic, especially in the intro stages. I made the mistake of going magic heavy (Orange Knight) early on, and had a much more difficult time than some buddies that went melee heavy. Also, agility is more or less useless; I beat the game with relative ease without having to put any points in it. I’m sure it helps but I can’t see agility being more important than melee.
For all the issues with CC, the awesome parts are there in spades. The boss fights are for the most part well done (the corn boss is an ass). Riding horses / camels / dinosaurs is nice nod to Golden Axe. All the secrets and hidden items up the replayability considerably (I’m a sucker for secrets in games anyway). Juggling enemies is rewarding as hell (Jump, X a bunch of times, Y every now and then, repeat).
Anyway, I loved CC and I’ll end up playing it some more, especially after the major bugs have been patched. I’m convinced that if you don’t like CC you hate good games.