Life and Leisure. Tech and Toys.

Games like Castle Crashers is what Xbox Live Arcade was made for. Deep games that are casual enough for anyone is exactly the type of games Microsoft wants on Xbox Live Arcade. You have to credit Behemoth once again for mixing the formulas of all the games we used to love to come up with a monster hit.

We’ve been missing the four player hack and slash for some time now and the fact that Castle Crashers lets you go online and play with others means you probably won’t get lonely. The game gets much deeper than your typical TMNT Arcade game by introducing RPG aspects. Each player will level up their own knight and get to assign stat points like strength, magic, defense and speed. In addition you’ll also be able to spend the gold you gather during your quests to purchase new weapons and accessories.

Even though the game is not extremely long, you’ll continue to play it because of the 20 or more unlockable characters and a plethora of unlockable weapons. There is also a battle arena for those who want to slash it out online.

In addition to these features the graphics and charisma of the game are beautifully inviting. It’s amazing how well 2D sprites can come alive on an HD platform. If you’ve played Alien Homonid, you know exactly what to expect from these guys.

Now to talk about the minor gripes I have with the game. When I play a local game each player needs their own profile. Because of this there is no sharing of unlocked weapons. Even the characters that were leveled up under someone elses profile will not carry over. This kind of defeats the purpose of trying to go through the game in a group to unlock stuff. I guess this ensures that you’ll have to play the game a lot if you want to unlock everything, you’ll probably find it easier to unlock everything by playing single player.

Also I ran into a bug which didn’t allow me to hit START to go to the menu to quit the game. I ended up hitting the Xbox button to quit the game but I lost some unsaved data.

Castle Crashers is the best XBLA to date and thats saying a lot when this years line up also includes Geometry Wars 2, Bionic Commando and Braid.

Keep an eye out for those loveable Castle Crashers Collectibles!