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Castle Crashers
The most fun you can have for $15.
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"Castle Crashers" is a really great little game. It's like a combination of Golden Axe and Diablo. Right from the very start you'll see the similarities to Golden Axe, complete with running villagers and burning buildings, and the reason I compare it to Diablo is because of the persistent nature of your character's stats and loot. You maintain your level and stats and have access to all the weapons and pets you've come across no matter how many times you start the game over. This makes the goal of the game reaching level 99 with as many of the characters as you can rather than simply completing it. I really enjoy this mechanism and am glad it's becoming so popular lately with games like Dead Rising and Too Human coming out.
Whenever one is playing a game, I assume they are doing so with some objective in mind. For most story-based games that objective is simply reach the end. In these modern dungeon crawlers, though, the content of the game can be experienced again and again because really the objective you are focusing on is building your character and seeing how the change in stats affects your ability to succeed in the game. The goal becomes creating the ultimate character that can rip apart any series of foes you throw at him. This is why people get addicted to MMOs and will create multiple capped chars because the end goal of perfecting your character is nearly unreachable.
"Castle Crashers", unfortunately, falls short of where it could have been because they did not take the character customizability and loot system far enough. It is an extremely dumbed down character builder and for that reason it's hard to see why I will spend my time playing more than one char to 99. I have played 3 different characters now and they all seem to have very similar magic, weapons, and execution. It's great having 12 hidden characters to open up, but they should vary and have something unique in each of them otherwise it’s just a new skin for the same guy you've been building this whole time. Granted, I haven't opened up all the characters or even played one of them to 99, so it's possible that I will stand corrected in time.
I can't leave without saying something about the art direction, as well. Not only does this game feature fantastic gameplay but the art is so unique and the variance in environments so lush that you can't get bored by the graphics. Something new and humorous is always being thrown at you and it's all done in a modern animation style unseen in many games. The game is an absolute joy to experience visually from beginning to end.
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Graphics
Awesome art and fantastic direction. May not have the most complex graphics in the world but the attention to detail is immaculate.
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9.0 |
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Sound
Nothing exceptional, but don't want to dock it too much. The sound worked perfectly for what it was intended.
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7.5 |
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Gameplay
Surfing along the top of a wave of guys is awesome fun. This game is all about air juggling and the combat is top notch for 2D side-scrolling.
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8.5 |
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Originality
Love the character progression system, art, and combat. Can't score this category TOO high, though, as it's your basic 2D fighting.
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8.5 |
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Interface
Too basic. The ability to connect online and find a game not only isn't working at launch, but even if it was I would still find it cumbersome.
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5.0 |
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Fun
I played this game through 3 times the first few days I had it. Each time I finished it I just started it again. It's a joy to play.
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9.0 |
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Lasting Appeal
I will come back to this game for years, but each visit will be short lived as the character building is too shallow to make it interesting for long.
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7.5 |
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Overall
This is one that I will return to again and again as time goes on, working on a new character each time. For the cost of the game you really can't get much more bang per buck.
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7.9 |
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