Castle crashing at its finest.
CC opens up with an evil wizard and his army crashing your kingdoms castle and stealing this big crystal in the throne room. In addition to laying havoc throughout the castle and stealing that obelisk, they steal the princesses as well! Naturally, as one of four knights, you go in pursuit of the grimy bastards.
So essentially you go left to right, beat up anything that moves, grab loot and fight hilarious yet tough bosses. Levels are broken up on a world map, which is one of those connect-the-dots types of maps. There are also shops that you can use gold to buy stuff and arenas that are optional but serve as good places to level up (more on this later). In combat you have light and heavy attacks and you unlock more combos as you play. You also have magic, but it serves more as a booster element for attacks rather than a full-fledged separate arsenal. Your knight can also block but I almost never use it, I'd rather just dodge. There are also items like bows, shovels and health potions to help you in your quest.
The lite-RPG elements in CC aren't very deep so don't worry about micro-managing or anything. When you level up, by gaining experience from killing enemies, you get skill points that you can allocate to four categories. Choose to beef up your strength, agility, magic or defense at your will. In addition to leveling up you can get these pets. These critters are basically familiars and they will help you in various ways; one may bring you hidden restorative fruit while another may knock enemies down. They are also so damn cute, especially Rammy.
In CC there are a ton of unlockable characters and obtainable weapons. Majority of the characters are unique but some of them have the same magic abilities as others. As for weapons they all have distinct stats and some of them are just wacky. There are pitchforks, axes, lightsaber like weapons, blunt cudgels of all sizes and even tree branches!
On the music side Castle Crashers shines with its epic orchestral arrangements and a handful electronic techno-y battle tunes. Most of the tunes I already heard as they are user submissions on Newgrounds(dot)com, but this isn't a knock against Castle Crashers, in fact I love it. I remember reading about how Helix6 got a contract with The Behemoth; his industrial tracks are perfect boss battle music. Oh and ParagonX9s' song Chaoz Japan is also in the game and it's as addicting as ever. Despite already having some of the songs and being familiar with most of them I still enjoyed the audio spectrum. Sound effects are nice and crisp as well, with satisfying thwacks and splatters.
There are tons of references to Newgrounds, The Behemoth itself and other flash works in CC. The flash 'Walk in the Woods' gets a huge cameo in the Forest levels (excrement rocket is go!) and Alien Hominid is an unlockable character as well. But all of it wouldn't matter if it looked like crap. Thankfully CC looks awesome; if you thought lead artist Dan Paladin's work in Alien Hominid was good you haven't seen anything yet. Everything is immaculately hand-drawn with lush detail and a cartoon styIe all its own. From a technical standpoint it's great as well; there are very little jagged lines and no framerate hiccups. Enemy and boss designs are funky and unique and wait until you see the Catfish boss, freaking weird as hell but absolutely hysterical to see in action.
The Behemoth believes in retro gameplay and with that comes a tough level of difficulty. CC isn't very hard when you're playing with others obviously, but going solo is a bit too hard than it should be. Enemies that have ranged attacks, be it bows, fireballs or razor sharp discs, when they attack en masse you better have a health potion handy. Usually though within a level there is a section when you get to ride a mount, like camels in the desert or giant lizards in the forest, so you can beat the snot out of everything with ease and laugh as your foes get pummeled.
Four-player multiplayer is available as well in CC. Locally it works fine but you may experience some connection issues over Xbox Live. When you do find a good connection with other players it's very enjoyable and a blast. Hopefully The Behemoth will alleviate the online aspect and fix it up soon. In addition to the main campaign in CC there are two mini-games. 'Arena' is just like a versus mode and 'All You Can Quaff' is basically a eating contest where you must mash the X and Y buttons to stuff yourself as fast as possible. It's silly and ridiculous but still very amusing. Both of them are playable over Live as well.
CC is a funny, charming and satisfying adventure that is definitely worth checking out. Sure it costs 1200 Microsoft points ($15) but it's worth every penny. Downloadable games, especially XBLA games, don't usually reach this level of quality and enjoyment. Where else can you eat peanut butter and jelly sandwichs that make you grow bigger and stronger?