So, Castle Crashers went up at about 1 AM Pacific Time this morning. I just spent about an hour and a half playing co-op with some dudes from SA, and it's a lot of fun. It's a side-scrolling brawler in the vein of Double Dragon, or more accurately the old Capcom beat-em-ups from the early 1990s, with some light RPG elements (you level up and can put stat points into 4 different categories) and collectible weapons and animal helpers. The art style is awesome and the gameplay is simple but still has nice depth in terms of combos and magic attacks and all that. There are also mild competitive elements, because you are always grabbing gold and items from fallen enemies before your teammates can get them first, and at the end of certain boss fights you fight against each other to win the captive princess. It's also made by a tiny independent company (I think the developer employs all of 6 people), and it's selling for 15 dollars, which is more than every other Live Arcade game except Puzzle Quest, Braid, and the Penny Arcade game. However, after less than 2 hours I feel comfortable saying that it's worth it. It looks great, plays great, and I didn't see a hint of lag during the entire time I played co-op (although I didn't know where the other guys were geographically).
If enough people here buy it we should definitely get a QC game going, that would be pretty rad. I'm definitely going to be playing in the morning after I wake up, probably until I have to go to work.
