So, I’ve been in Europe for the past two weeks visiting one of my friends who lives in Heidelberg, Germany.  We saw many sites; Ibiza, Amsterdam, Valencia, Munich…but when we got back to Heidelberg, my buddy (who I’ll call Fro) had to “work” so I was stuck entertaining myself with his 360.

Dureing my day of recovery whereI just sat naked in his bed in my underwear on the couch, I tested out the Castle Crashers demo.  Graham and Fro had both been talking about the game for sometime.  I played the demo and it was sick.  So when Mike got home that night, I made him buy it.  Long story short, we spent the next two nights playing it rather then going out and chasing European tail.

I spent the first day of the demo trying out all of the original four characters “magic” powers.  The red dude shoots out a lil spark of lighting, the blue dude calls fourth a single ice spike that freezes the enemy, the orange dude lights a lil fire in front of him, and the green dude farts a green cloud that does dammage over time.  When Fro got home, I chose Blue, he chose Green.  Well, I chose Green for him…he does have a pretty sick power, Fro just didn’t know how to utlize it.  He was never good at WoW either, so it explaines a lot.

Anyway, so the concept of the game has no real plot.  Some shadowy guy steals some big crsystal and some chicks get stolen…reason enough to run out and lay waste to the evil doers.  The game is very reminicent of the 2.5 Dimensional side scrolling style of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcarde games or that HUGE X-Men Arcade that I used to spend hours playing (Colossus was the best).

The game adds much more then what those games offered, here are a few things I really liked:

1) You gain experience as you go and can use experience points to modify the abilities of your character.  Strength (more damage), Magic (more magical powers and damage), Defense (more health), and Agility (you run faster…….) are the main skill sets.  Fro focused on Strength while I focused on Magic.  He hit like a tank, I was basically became Sub Zero.

2) They have these “pets” that you find/aquire throughout the game.  They hover around you and enhance certain abilities.  Makes it interesting to figure out exactly how you want to utilize their abilities which range from faster walking through water to increasing your chances of finding rare items.

3) Weapons also have skill modification abilities.  You either randomly get/find weapons as you go, or you can buy them from stores.  Again, the strategy of figuring out which wepaon you want to use is pretty cool.

4) The game is funny and challanging.  ITs funny for example, that at some point you are in a forest and after every few fights and animal comes a long, you hear stomping, and the animal shits itself.  Also, when you save a princess after defeating a boss, you then have to fight your team mate to see who gets the princess.  Its challanging because….well it gets harder as you go.   You have to develop strategies in order to beat groups of foes and bosses. 

5) The really cool thing is in the end, you keep your character and their abilities AND gain new characters.  You can replay the game with that character and “max” out his abilities or choose another character you’ve “earned” and play with their different magical abilities.  These new characters are pretty cool.  I have no clue how you earn them other then random assignment after beating the game, but there are a multitude of unlockable characters out there.  Most of them are the mobs you face throughout the game.  They each have their own unique magincal ability.

6) Multiplayer.  Fro and I played together and it was a lot of fun and brought us closer together…..

…yes, we are holding hands.  Anyway, what is cool is you can play online as well.  I havne’t tried teaming up with someone online for the story mode, but you can use your specialized character to battle people online.  Orginally, we thought this would be boring, but it take a decent amount of skill win one of these fights.

There are just a few small suggestions I would have made for this game:

1) In the beginning, when you level up, this little king guy pops out and tells you what new moves, combos, or abilities you have earned.  This stops after a while, which is a little frustrating because after Fro and I beat the entire game, we realized that there was a third magical move (where you jump and do AoE damage) that we could have used in story mode.  Made us wonder if there were combos we didn’t know about.

2) Everytime you get a weapon, you have to pick it up.  There is good and bad to this.  The bad is that only the players that pick it up can equip it in the future.  If some sick weapons drops, my teammate picks it up, and then doesn’t let me pick it up, I can never use it.  The good news is that you do have the ability to drop a weapon and then have your team mate pick it up.  Its confusing and sometimes with everything going on you can’t quite figure it out, so its kind of a pain.

3) Item stats!  If you pick up a pet or a weapon, you can’t find out the stats or abilities for it until the end of the level.  You have to remember to exit out to the game map, and go to some random little area to check to see if the weapon or pet you just found is even worth having.

In summary, I think this is one of the better games I’ve played in a long time.  I’ve been dyin to play a game online with my friends, and this game has tons or replayability…much more then even a high production game like, say Assasin’s Creed.  So if you have the chance, and 1200 Microsoft Points, pick this game up!