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A new game addiction – Castle Crashers

This summer has been big for downloadable games. If you own a Playstation 3, XBox 360, or even a Wii you can download, for a fee, some really fun and exciting new games and remakes of older games. One of the newest and most addictive games to come to the XBox Live Marketplace is called Castle Crashers.

Castle Crashers

Castle Crashers is a sidescrolling beat-em-up which reminds me of Streets of Rage or Double Dragon. In addition, the game has some roleplaying elements. You can level up your characters in four basic categories that improve hit points, long range attacks, melee attacks, and magic. You can also find different weapons with different stats hidden in the levels. There are animal orbs that will give you different powers as well. These range from a cute little owl that helps you find healing items to a bat that gnaws on enemies. While that sums up the basic game, there is also a button mashing mini-game called "All You Can Quaff" and you can fight people in an arena either locally or online.

The game itself is really wonderful to watch and play. The graphics are gorgeous and the character animations are smooth and never look strange or out of place. The game also has a sense of humor that propels you through the campaign. I was always wondering what the next enemy or boss would be, and the imagination of the creatures and levels doesn't disappoint.

While the basic game is really addictive, I do have some minor problems with it. A major issue is making sure my character is lined up properly with the enemies. Sometimes I find myself swinging and hitting nothing when it looks like I should be connecting with an enemy. This can get even more confusing in the larger boss battles when so many things are happening all at once. The other minor complaint I have is the difficulty level. It is hard to try and play in the single player campaign. It almost seems made to play with friends, and while that's not a bad thing, it can make going back through for weapons and secrets a bit more tedious by yourself. It's a very retro game and with that comes a retro difficulty level, so be warned.

The one aspect of the game that I haven't tried is playing with or against people online. All of my multiplayer has been done locally, so I can't say whether the online works well or not.

When I think about this game, I get a bit giddy. Sure it has it's minor problems, but for the most part it's a stellar addition to the XBox Live line-up. With a ton of secrets to unlock, weapons and characters to collect, and evil teddy bears to kill, I can predict that I will be playing this game for a long time.

Zero Punctuation Previews Going To X-Play… I’ll Pass

From Kotaku:

"Beginning Tuesday, February 12, short previews of the wildly popular videos from creator Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw and The Escapist magazine will become an ongoing "X-Play" feature. Previews of "Zero Punctuation" videos will premiere exclusively on "X-Play" every Tuesday evening..."

Sigh... I enjoy Zero Punctuation tremendously, but censored chopped previews of five minutes segments? The new X-Play is horrible. The new show peppered with boring interview segments and far more boring game play segments. The hand on game play segment of the new Smash Bros. Brawl made me cringe. But at least the sketches are gone.

Here's what they need to do:

Make the show one half hour. Open with the voice over tease, go straight to the game news, have at least one review per show and prepackage your interviews. They need to get rid of the constant throws from Adam to Morgan and Morgan to Adam. Those eat up minutes per episode. No more audio looping in reviews or previews. I can't even begin to fathom how many reviews I've seen with that scourge.