Why yes, this IS a giant bug-eyed cat chasing a knight riding a baby deer through a sawmill. Name another game that features situations like this. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Castle Crashers is what happens when a bunch of guys like me get together to make a game. That’s the conclusion I’ve arrived at after spending a few hours playing this game with my cohorts… err, kids.

I’ve always been a fan of games with twisted humor. Psychonauts is one of my all-time favorites, for example. Games that have you laughing out loud while you play are almost always a surefire win. If one takes a game that can make me laugh out loud, and then adds a heaping helping of perfect controls, amazing graphics, replayability, depth of character customization, and RPG elements, I’m basically in with no more questions asked.

Castle Crashers is made by The Behemoth. The Behemoth subscribes to a philosophy that I can get behind. These are a bunch of console developers who saw the writing on the wall during industry consolidation and decided to break off and go it alone instead of selling their souls to work on games they didn’t truly love. They took on a great deal of risk to make their first game, Alien Hominid, and the gamble paid off. They experienced commercial success even though they didn’t have a mega publisher behind them. Once they had some security, they could start making another awesome game. Normally I wouldn’t go into this kind of depth to explain the creators’ motivation for making a game, but I think in this case the motivation to create a game like Castle Crashers was such that a game like this could only be made under unique circumstances such as these.  I want to be very clear on one thing: This game feels entirely hand crafted. And it is. Handmade by gaming fanatics; guys who use their online handles in their dev blogs. Guys who are comfortable with being called Synji and Newgrounds. Guys who had their buddy Clint make molds for figurines of their game characters. Guys who don’t want to look at your resume unless you worked on Gunstar Heroes. These guys could be you or me. They made a game, and all we can do is buy it, play it and absolutely adore it.

Green Knight! POWER OF POISON! (My personal favorite)

Enough starry-eyed musings from this sentimental game reviewer. Let’s get to it.

Castle Crashers is, at its heart, a 2D comic-style, side-scrolling fighter in the same vein as many early 90’s four player co-op arcade games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, BattleToads (not the insanely impossible NES version, mind you), and X-Men arcade. Each player controls a Knight of a different color, you have basic button-mashing attacks (two varieties – ‘light’ and ‘heavy’), and wave after wave of increasingly tough enemies. As you defeat enemies you earn money and experience. Money can buy new weapons, healing potions, pets to aid you (more on this in a moment) and other useful items. As you level up, you learn new combos, and are given skill points to allocate to strength, magic, defense, and speed.

In the beginning, you can choose from one of four colors. Each knight has a different magic power. Green releases a poison cloud, red shoots lightning, blue freezes enemies, and yellow shoots fire. As you gain levels, these magic powers increase and you gain new magic abilities. Later, you unlock other colors, such as the silver knight who throws bombs and drops arrows out of the sky. Here’s the rub: Best to stick with a color from the beginning, because the experience gained “sticks” with that knight. If I sign in as SM Prime and start the game as the green knight, then the next day switch to yellow, I am starting as a level one knight—even if I’m at the end of the game and my friends are level 20.

The story goes like this: Your knights are having a party at the castle. There’s music, dancing, food, and rowdiness. Suddenly a messenger comes stumbling into the festhall with an arrow in his back. The king’s giant magic gem has been stolen, and the four princesses have been kidnapped. Who is daring enough to affect a rescue? Who is strong enough to deal with this threat to the peace and prosperity of the kingdom?

Highly original, I know. I believe Plato or maybe Shakespeare wrote the story.

At any rate, that’s not why were here. We’re here to kick ass and take names. Castle Crashers provides plenty of that. Enemies come in giant swarms, and are rarely duplicated. The variety of enemies is astounding; not only in power and abilities, but size and shape as well. You’ll fight barbarians, desert warriors, skeletons, knights with lightsabers, ninjas, bears, giant cats, bats, and cyclopes. You’ll fight on horseback, camelback, deerback, sharkback, and more. You fight in thieves’ forests, mecha-castles, active volcanoes, graveyards, deserts, and rivers. The variety is excellent. There are dozens of weapons to find, tons of treasures, multitudes of pets, mounts, and items.

Pets, yes. As you chop your way through the game, you’ll encounter super cute little animals that befriend you and faithfully (and invulnerably) follow you. Sometimes they’re just milling around. Sometimes you have to kill their previous owner. No matter how you get them, each pet helps you in some way. Bitey Bat rushes forward and chomps down on enemies’ heads, distracting them while you get a few free swings in. Rammy charges into foes, knocking them down for you. Some pets help find hidden items, some attack enemies, and some confer special abilities.

Even though this game does not ask you to take it seriously, it is extremely challenging. Yes, there are levels full of animals that rocket-propel themselves away from danger by emitting a stream of poop. There are levels where giant monsters come out to mourn their defeated bosses, crying like babies. There is a giant sock puppet that attempts to smash your knights into the ground while a puppet dragon breathes fire all over you. Despite the silliness, the challenges are real and you will definitely die a few times while attempting to get through the hordes. Luckily, if you are playing with friends, they have the ability to revive you. It can be quite a challenge to get this done, however. If you fall in combat, a friend must rush over to your body and pump your chest five times (a quick rhythm game – hit the button when the moving cursor is centered over the “heart” icon), which is simple enough except for the hordes of monsters waiting to knock you away from your fallen comrade. It usually takes three – one to run interference while the other performs “CPR” on the fallen one.

Which leads us to this: This is a co-op game. Playing alone is alright. It’s not bad. It’s sort of fun. But playing with friends really brings out the best qualities of this game. I am absolutely loving the trend towards co-op gaming as time goes on, and Castle Crashers exemplifies the experience. You cannot play this game with friends and have a bad time.

I’ve been playing through the game with my kids. I think more parents should do this, because not only is it a great bonding experience (yes, dad and kids laughing at giant bears pooping in the forest is indeed a bonding experience), it helps keep you involved in your kids’ gaming habits. Of course, if you’re reading this and you have kids, chances are you’re already the kind of parent that doesn’t worry about what their kids are doing online because you are savvy and involved in their lives anyway. Preaching to the choir, etc.

There are several reasons why I will heartily recommend this game as a “buy”:

• Philosophically, you are supporting the independent game developer movement. Giving a small indie studio your hard earned gaming dollars sends a clear signal that you don’t need to be backed by multi-billion dollar publishing clearinghouses to make compelling, quality content.
• Extremely bright, colorful graphics; excellent controls, great music, wonderful presentation.
• Challenging enough for experienced players, but playable by almost anyone.
• Replayability through customization, unlocking achievements, and collecting all the weapons and pets.
• There is a sandvich in this game
• It’s cheap – only 1200 MS points
• Why are you still reading this?

^ This… Why are you still reading this? Go buy Castle Crashers. For serious.