DLC Monday - Castle Crashers

Hello and Welcome to our first DLC Monday.

This week we are going to focus on a downloadable game on Xbox Live Arcade: Castle Crashers

Castle Crashers is the newest game by the team that brought us Alien Hominid. [EDIT: some people where asking who the developer was: The Behemoth.  There, are you happy?] This game is basically an amalgamation of Gauntlet and Golden Axe with a few RPG elements thrown in. It all boils down to a fun beat'em up with a ton of re-playability.

Gameplay consists of running around while hacking and slashing enemies. As you progress through the stages you gain experience and levels, allowing you to upgrade one of four attributes; Attack, Magic, Defense/health, and Agility/Pet. Throughout the game you will collect various weapons that affect you stats in different ways (about 80 or so in total, with subsequent playthroughs) and include such ridiculous things as a fishing pole, Umbrella, Chicken, Sausage, LightSaber and more. You will also collect various pet "orbs"(kind of like animal heads...) throughout the game, all with varying abilities (increase defense, knock down foes, etc).

You start the game with only 4 playable characters(Red, Blue, Green, and Orange Knights) but unlock more characters by beating the game, with each knight, then beating the game again with the unlocked character. You can also unlock characters in one of the two minigames: The arena. Each character has a unique look, and a unique magic.

The other minigame is called "All you can quaf", an eating contest for up to 4 players which doesn't require any skill beyond who can alternate button presses the fastest. This is my least favorite part of the game, and luckily is completely optional.

The Character and level designs are often hilarious and just plain weird. The game rips-off borrows many games and popular culture memes. Lightsabers, ride-able mounts ala GoldenAxe, Terminator 2 death scene, All in a very Rube-Goldberg manner. While the levels are interesting and well drawn, they fall into the stereotypes (intentionally I believe) of most games: Desert, Forest, Ice, Lava levels, etc. There are many other homages to games that I won't spoil here.

The music in the game is silly at times, but for the most part complements each level nicely.

The game is not without problems however. Though it allows for online and local co-op, most people (myself included) have experience difficulties with connecting to an online session. Also, I experienced numerous anomalies in game play that caused me to repeat whole levels: Enemies freezin on screen and becoming invincible (you have to kill them all to progress), overwhelming number of enemies attacking me to the point that I was frozen in place and couldn't die (you have to fall down to die...). A patch is coming in the near future that should address some of these issues.

Despite these issues, I really enjoy the game (beat it last night) and look forward to subsequent playthroughs. I am sure there are a lot of features I missed, but, download the demo (then the game, believe me, you will) and see for yourself.


And now for this weeks DLC releases(and some of last weeks)Click the names for more info:
Virtual Console:

• Vectorman(800 points) - This was a great Genesis game that really pushed the system with some impressive 3D and great music.
  
• Super DodgeBall(500 points)
  

WiiWare:

• MegaMan 9 (1000 points) - A return to the roots of MegaMan. 8-bit graphics, sound, and difficulty!
  
• Plättchen: Twist 'n' Paint (1000 points)
  

XBLA:

• Domino Master(800 Points)
  
• Feeding Frenzy 2: Shipwreck Showdown(800 Points)
  

Xbox 360:

• Burnout Paradise Bike Update (Free)
  

PSN:

• COD 4 Map Pack - (repriced to $4.99 until the 25th)

PSN-PSP:

• Cube ($9.99)
• PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient ($9.99)

And that's it for DLC Monday! Let us know what you think in the comments.

~K