Castle Crashers: Mini-Review

DEVELOPER: The Behemoth
PUBLISHER: The Behemoth
Played On: PS3 & PC

This is what the box art would look like if it came in a box. As far as I've seen, it's a digital download on both the PSN and Steam.

I've purchased it on both systems (Steam sale made it $5 for 4 copies, 3 of which I gave to friends) as well as the Pink Knight and the Blacksmith character (purple knight with stag horns). I play it far more often on the PS3 just because the controls are easier to handle. I have an XBOX360 controller to hook up to the PC but haven't picked up the adapter yet.

On to the mini-review:Castle Crashers is a ridiculously fun, 2D sidescrolling action game, akin to the days of old (Double Dragon, River City Ransom, et al.). I've been playing it off and on for about a year now and it's definitely worth getting into. I have had a lot of fun playing solo, and can see how multiplayer would be even more fun.The premise is simple: an evil mage steals a large jewel, and kidnaps 4 princesses. It's up to you to fight through the lands to get them all back! As expected, the princesses are divided up and made end prizes for various locations. One of them you rescue almost immediately (within 3 levels from the start).

Yes, that is a CATFISH.

The graphic style looks incredible. The hand drawn feel is amazing, and the animation is just plain great. Boss fights are often imaginative but don't require tons of strategy. The humor is mostly absurd, but it's all very entertaining.

You can level up your character with experience points, raising attributes and become more powerful, but you still reach a point where the enemies are too tough and you need to re-play levels just to get enough XP to level up and be strong enough to take them out. I've reached that point. I honestly can't progress without other people playing along side, mostly because the creatures are harder than I can take on by myself. That said, I think I've conquered about 1/2 the game.

God of War Collection (GoW 1 and 2)

PUBLISHER: Sony

DEVELOPER: Sony
Played on: PS3
Initial impression (1): Finally.
Initial impression (2): Better? Better.

Liked:
- Story
- Visuals

Disliked:
- QTE Abuse
- Any Rushed/Timed Puzzle

On The Fence:
- Myth Overload

Kratos, a Spartan pleading for help from the gods while in the heat of battle, unwittingly becomes a slave to Ares, the God of War. Tragedy befalls him and his subsequent revenge is your journey. It drags you through 'heaven and hell,' literally, to destroy those who wronged you. It will be hard for me to separate the two games without doing two separate reviews, but that's OK because what I liked and didn't is the same across both games.

God of War (1) Screenshot

Liked
The tale of Kratos is one I was already slightly familiar with. Previously I had been riveted by Chains of Olympus on the PSP, which provided enough of a back story to make that game interesting but not so much to make GoW unnecessary. Aside from some seemingly dead-end moments, the pacing of the game unraveled the tale nicely. The visuals - a cleaned up and repackaged PS2 game - were amazing, considering the game's age. I'll have to look into what they actually did with the remastering, because the cutscenes looked great. The environments like Hades and Pandora's Temple were very inspired.

Disliked
Quick Time Events are when you're watching a cutscene and there's a break in the action where a button command flashes on the screen. You have about 2 seconds or less to react or else it's game over. I'm also no stranger to QTEs. Shenmue had them. Heavy Rain had them. Lots of games have had them, but the ones in GoW feel forced. Every GoW game I've played has these QTEs at the most disjointed locations (defeating a major boss, watching story... OH SHIT SMASH BUTTONS!) and every time it caught me off-guard. Furthermore, every time you failed to press the button in time it was completely "game over" forcing you to re-watch the same cutscene OVER AND OVER until you got it right. Even worse, the button combos CHANGE every time you encounter the QTE. FUCK QTEs.

Press X To Jason.. er, eye gouge.

Also, timed puzzles are shit. I complain about these every time I encounter them and I will continue to complain about them because they are asinine bullshit. You know exactly what I mean - push a button or throw a lever on the extreme left side of a room, then run like hell to get through the gate it opened 3 rooms over to the extreme right. There was one such timed puzzle that I had to look up how to defeat it, but it took me watching a video to get through. It sucked, because I had already figured out what needed to be done but I wasn't doing it fast enough. Turns out (as I saw in the video) I was jumping too early and it added a quarter-second to the time needed to get through. This was rage-inducing to the point I wanted to hurl the controller through the TV. Oh, my point - GoW is riddled with these timed puzzles. There's at least one every stage/area. Luckily 90% of them are not so surgically precise.

On The Fence
I don't honestly recall much of GoW1's plot to say if it completely qualifies for the myth overload descriptor, but GoW2 certainly does. Pegasus, Icarus, Gaia, Prometheus, Zeus, Atlas, Perseus just to name a few, and almost all of those characters give you some sort of power or weapon to use. It was my encounter with Icarus that sparked my eye-rolling at the sheer amount of mythology that was being piled on. I'm not really complaining about it, but I did feel that they were being unfortunately shoehorned into the tale to provide cool accessories more than they were being given the proper representation. Granted, a curious sort will go look those stories up after the exposure, but you're not answering many Jeopardy! questions from playing these games.

In Conclusion
The God Of War collection is a great way to play the PS2 games I was never able to play, mostly because I didn't own a PS2. They look great and gameplay is solid. There are some frustrating mechanics that define the genre of third person platformers, but in spite of them you get a great story.

PARENTAL WARNING: Lots of violence, lots of female nudity. Boobs, large and perky, are often seen uncovered. There's a sex mini-game (which apparently is completely miss-able). The Oracle, some random women on a boat, and even some enemies have giant DD+ sized tits that are never covered. Oh yeah... that sex mini game? It's a QTE.

This is from God of War III, but it's just continuing the trend.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

PUBLISHER: Ubisoft

DEVELOPER: Obsidian/SPS
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Sweet...

Liked:
- Story
- Visuals
- Music

Disliked:
- Repetition
- Overall 'Rushed' Feeling
- Thematic Breakdown

On The Fence:
- DLC?

"Maybe we started to rely on Microsoft and Sony so much that we forgot that all we need to play are the simplest things. Like, like this. [grabs a stick from the ground] We could just play with this. Screw video games, dude! Who fuckin' needs them?!" 

-Eric Cartman

Episode 246: Titties And Dragons

In the best viral marketing I've seen in a long time, South Park creators Matt & Trey had a three-part Game of Thrones/Console Wars parody that ended with an advertisement for this game. Years in the making (I want to believe it started with the LOTR parody episode), they finally had it ready... and it was SWEET.

This is totally what it's like, you guys...

Likes
The tale has you, the new kid in town, learning who your neighbors and new friends are, all through an extended Live-Action Role Playing game of which apparently all the boys in town are taking part. Doesn't matter what you look like or what your name is (but, let's be clear, you're a boy... no girls allowed), they'll take you in because you're one of them. You gather friends on Facebook (that's what the menu and inventory screen is based on!) and there's even an achievement or two for getting popular. Like any other standard RPG, you have a 'party' of friends traveling with you, but in combat you can only use one of them (2 on your side, up to 4 on the enemy side). Each 'buddy' has special abilities that tie to them - Butters can invoke his Professor Chaos persona, while Kyle has a lot of Jewish-themed moves. The gameplay, visuals and dialog are as if you're watching a multiple part episode story arc on Comedy Central. Everything in the world looks, sounds and feels like it does on the show. The medieval fantasy inspired music interjected with familiar pieces from the beginning of the show's existence remind me of the old LucasArts IMUSE system.

Your first friend is Butters. This isn't even a spoiler as it happens about 2 minutes into the game.

Dislikes
The few things I didn't like seem a little nit-picky. Dialog in fights are incredibly repetitious, especially when you're using the same supporting characters and their special abilities often. I swear if I hear the Professor Chaos intro again I'm going to be ill.

I felt at one point that I was being rushed from plot point to plot point, and as a result I was missing out on some of the more subtle things happening in the game universe. I learned to just ignore my main quest line on the second play through (I'm about half-way through that). It's not really a race to the end, and the game is short enough without running straight to the main quest points.

Then there's thematic breakdown of equipment. "What is thematic breakdown?," you might ask. It's when a game is created with a very specific theme, but then factors are introduced that chip away at the set theme in a way that makes it lose the original spark. This game suffers from it in that the gear you use quickly becomes unthematic. At first, you are dressed appropriately for a kid's interpretation of medieval fantasy, but as you level up and outgrow the usefulness of that equipment, you can only replace it with stuff like SWAT gear. I think they should have had a system in place where you take the 'found' items (i.e. SWAT gear) to the kid playing an armorer to alter it into the appropriate style. The only other system I think they should have introduced as an alternative is to have a 'gear' loadout and a 'cosmetic' loadout, like what LOTRO has. This way your cosmetic could look right, but your stats are coming from your actual gear.

On The Fence
This DLC rant involves two things: Pre-order DLC and the dangling carrot of more content. Dangling carrot first: I'll say it. This game was short. Really short. Arkham City short. inFamous 2 short. So short that you might not feel pleased for spending $60 on it. But never fear - They claim that DLC is on the way, including more quests! Hordes of people online are bitching about it being content that was supposed to be in the game that they removed to offer as DLC. Some speculate that it's unfinished levels, and that Obsidian wanted to see how the game was received before bothering with polishing them. Whatever. Just give me more to do and I'll be happy.

Now the Pre-Order DLC. I'll admit it. I pre-ordered to get the three exclusive costumes, and they were great. They looked awesome and weren't too overpowered for the level in which I was using them. That said, I really wish I could have used them for more than a level or two. I out-leveled their usefulness in about a half hour.

This is what I got. The Fellowship Pack is thematic and great, while the other set is silly but fits SP.

In Conclusion
If you're a South Park super fan, you already have this game. If you're a slightly more casual fan (like me) you should totally check this game out. If it's been a while since you've watched South Park, do yourself a favor and catch up on the episodes before firing this game up. The amount of in-jokes that span the entire rub of the show is ridiculous and hilarious.

I'm hoping they listen to fans and come out with DLC or a new game that changes the Fantasy RP to the Super Hero (Coon & Friends) RP. That would be awesome.

PARENT WARNING: This game is crude in both visuals and dialog. It's NOT SAFE to play around kids, nor is it safe for kids to play. I don't care if they have watched the show. This is the equivalent of the raunchiest Tarantino-written R rated film, except it's now in interactive format.