My games of 2008 - Castle Crashers: we do routines and chorus scenes and footwork im-pec-able.

When Castle Crashers was announced waaaaaaaay way back in 2006 it made me sit up and take notice with an audible "Oooooooooooh!" and put a big grin on my face. By the same people that brought us the as-fun-as-being-kicked-in-the-balls-by-a-navvy-wearing-hobnails Alien Hominid ('difficult' is a word that really doesn't do how hard it is justice) it instantly looked different, funky, colourful and, best of all, old school as hell. There aren't enough sideways scrolling beat 'em up's in this day an age, so the promise of one on XBLA arcade with 4 player local and online co-op was far too good to be true, but true it was and I rejoiced. Then I waited. And waited. And w-a-i-t-e-d some more. and then, 2 years after announcement, it was released and the angels sang out in chorus, the heavens opened and the beautiful light shined down. Then everyone cried bloody murder because the online was fucked and the game randomly corrupted the save file. But this didn't happen to me, so I couldn't give a baboons shiny red arse.

Castle Crashers, as I mentioned, is an old school scrolling beat 'em' up. You move from left to right, sometimes automatically (like the chase through the forest), and beat the living crap out of the cutely rendered bad guys, engage in boss battle, collect money to buy weapons, potions, jam sandwiches and animals all in an attempt to save the princesses from some evil dude. Once an area is cleared you get to the map, move onto the next bit moving across the map and collecting items to unlock the next half of the map as you go. Along the way you find animals to accompany you, each having a specific attribute. The ram butts enemies over, the seahorse allows you walk quickly though shallow water, the vampire bat bites enemies heads and so on, you can switch these and the weapons between levels as you find new ones on the way.

As you progress and kill more enemies you earn experience that gives you points to spend in the 4 different attributes (Attack, Magic, Defence, Agility) so you can tailor your knight to be a complete smushing beast, or a nimble critter, or you can zap everything with your magic (each knight is a different 'element'), 'sup to you, but smushing shit is win for me.

Castle Crashers is a wonderful, WONDERFUL game. It's so utterly splendid in everything that it does it makes me swell up and grin like a pilled up moron, and it does so very little wrong. It's everything that's right with XBLA, and, to a degree, everything that's right with gaming. It's bright, bold, colourful and beautifully animated and infused with a sense of humour and fun that very few developers in this industry dominated with games by gurning meathead space marines and soldiers are willing to even consider, let alone take a stab at doing. That's not to say I abhor space marine or soldier games, but it can get a little bit tedious being visually bludgeoned by them when you look at the shelves in game shops. Anyway, from the off when your little knight is stood moshing to the band in the hall, to the cyclops knife wielder that dies in a flaming pit and does the thumbs up like Arnie at the end of Terminator 2, to the animals shitting themselves at the unseen monster in the forest (juvenile, I know, but it makes me giggle) it oozes charm, personality and humour and that's before you get to the act of cracking skulls. It plays pretty much like every other 2d beat em up, with added magic and blocking and jam sandwiches to make you MASSIVE (the King from the DLC looks a little like Hulk Hogan when you use a sandwich) so you can beat the crap out of things even more and get past specific barriers in the game and is an utter joy to mash and smash the faces of baddies.

Of course, as with any game of this nature, it only gets better with more players. Unfortunately, I only have 1 friend so have only played it in two player, and while making it easier this isn't a bad thing, as it's more about the fun of it than challenge. Nothing fundamentally changes, just the enemies hit a little harder and you have to fight for money and the princesses affections but other than that it's single player with added giggles.

So, it comes to the downside of Castle Crashers. What bad could I possibly say about this awesome slab of videogame entertainment. Well...some of the bosses aren't that great and frustrate a little, and the automatically scrolling levels weren't a good idea in 1991, never mind now. Oh yeah, and Behemoth have made a series of 4 Castle Crasher figures and I can't afford the $60 for all 4 which is an epic fail and am crai on my part but apart from that, the game is an absolute corker and worth the 1200 I paid for it.