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.