Castle Crashers has been hotly anticipated for quite some time now.  Behemoth is a small company that released Alien Hominid a couple of years ago; a pretty solid title that garnered some attention with its hand-drawn art style.  Castle Crashers is a side-scroller much like Alien Hominid but brings much more to the table.  Instead of being a shooter, it’s tailored like a hack n’ slash (with up to four players participating locally) much like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time for the SNES; with some RPG elements to help bring growth to your character.  These elements add together for one solid title, and could easily be one of the best XBLA games to date.

          The story is about some bad guy crashing a party at the castle and stealing a huge gem that belongs to the king; along with a couple of princesses.  So of course, the king sends out his army to retrieve the gigantic gem and his little princesses.  You take control of one of the king’s men but have some special abilities that set you apart from the others.  Your journey will send you through a range of environments where you will ultimately end up at the enemies’ spaceship.  The story might be recycled, but I feel a long drawn out tale would have taken away from the awesome game play.  Your character is silent and never develops much deeper than wanting to rescue the princesses and perform a ménage a trois.  Shallow story or not, the game is often hilarious and made me laugh more than once.  For instance, I was being followed by a large beast from which I couldn’t see but I could hear.  The animals in the jungle got so scared they deliberately made bowel movements.  One deer got so scared feces shot across the screen, and no, I didn’t make this up.  You expect this kind of humor from the guy that runs newgrounds.com though.

          This picture doesn't give the games art style justice, you have to see it in motion

          If you’ve played Alien Hominid before, you know the graphics are hand-drawn on a 2-D playing field that gives it that sort-of comic book feel.  Castle Crashers uses the same look esthetically but offers better graphical touches that aids in the game’s overall presentation.  The game really shines in how much animation is going on at a given point in time.  The many different bosses offer up some great vibrancy, and the background boasts great detail that will sometimes have lively movements.  Overall, the game looks great and was one of the many highlights.  The music is also worth noting, there isn’t a ton of different tracks, but they were all enjoyable to listen to and never once got old.  I especially liked the track playing as you go into a shopping part of the game; it put a smile on my face every time I heard it.  It’s also the track your character is rocking out to when you first start.

          The game play is very tight and offers a range of different attacks.  The X and Y buttons handle your attacks; X is for a weak attack while Y is for your stronger ones.  As you level up, you gain different combos that help keep the combat from growing stale.  Each character (there are 4 to start with) are equipped with different magic attacks that I felt were kind of weak.  You have a magic bar that depletes when using magic but quickly refills while not in use.

          Like I mentioned before, the game offers slight RPG elements to help develop character growth.  You can raise your attributes in four different fields: strength, magic, defense, and agility.  As you progress through the game, you collect different weapons including many different swords, cleavers, maces, and thrown in for good measure twigs and forks.  You can buy different weapons in shops around the map (along with potions, bombs, or different goods) and some enemies will drop them.  If you buy a weapon in a shop, you can see how it affects your stats, but this feature is missing for weapons in the wild.  Where I thought I was getting a stronger weapon out in the wild, it turned out weaker and I ultimately lost my stronger one.  This is a minor complaint but something you need to be precautious for.  You also gain weapons that you always have access to including a bow and a boomerang.  And if that’s not enough, you even get a little animal buddy that floats by you and attacks enemies.  There are more elements including chase scenes; during one you ride a deer, and there are also gladiator style arena matches.  There are more but I feel some are for you to discover.  It seemed it was always throwing new elements at me until the very end.  It appears Behemoth is going to keep developing for this game because it exhibits an option for downloadable content.

          Now onto enemies and bosses of which there are many.  Enemies basically come down to small enemies and medium enemies (large is held by the bosses), but there are different types of each. The medium enemies got a little annoying where if you get too close to them, they will pick you up and toss you across the screen. I quickly discovered they take a little patience to get through. The bosses were enjoyable to battle against but appeared to be a bit easy once I figured out their pattern.  My favorite boss was a painter who painted random images on his canvas and they came alive to attack me.

          one of the many boss fights

          Castle Crashers is a great title that reminds me of the 2-D realm glory days.  This might only be Behemoth’s second game they have released, but have proven they know how to make quality titles combining nostalgic game play with elements from games of this generation. The game’s $15 dollar price point (1,200 Microsoft points) might seem steep compared to other games on XBLA, but is a must to play for fans of mindless hack n’ slashes.