Castle Crashers

The art style is similar to Alien Hominid, but noticeably more polished and detailed. Incidental details abound, and the heavily stylised look is applied to an impressive range of enemies, animals and environments without ever feeling stale. Where the visuals prove less than useful is in the annoying frequency with which enormous scenery items obscure huge chunks of the screen. You're often left fighting with no idea of where you are and in a game that relies so heavily on controlled chaos that's a poor design decision.

The flat sprites also prove confusing where collision detection is concerned. It's a problem that affected many of the classic side-scrollers that influenced Castle Crashers, but it's somehow more annoying to see it occur in a modern game. The game is very fussy about where you can stand to actually land a hit, with a strange dead zone slightly above enemies but no such restriction below them. In other words, if you're standing a few pixels higher than an enemy, you probably won't hit them. Shuffle down by a tiny amount and suddenly your sword finds its target. This is especially problematic in some of the later boss fights, and is downright frustrating when you have to play a game of volleyball to progress. Miss the ball ten times and you have to replay the match, but with a flat ball sprite casting a circular shadow, you can be standing right underneath it and still have it pass through you.

The game isn't particularly well balanced either. Difficulty comes mostly from enemies who knock you down with ranged attacks, and then hit you with another one as soon as you get up. And another. And another. Your block move can be slow to respond in these circumstances, and precious health can be chipped away as you mash the buttons to try and get out of the way. That's assuming you're sticking with the melee attacks, since the magic system - when upgraded - proves so ludicrously effective that you can wipe out masses of enemies with powerful spells that recharge almost instantly. Enemies don't level along with you, so returning to the early stages with a character that's finished the game is embarrassingly easy.

None of these irritations are enough to dim the sheer fun of the game though, especially when played as intended - with four players, either locally, online or whatever mixture of the two best suits your social circle. Characters are carried across from one game to the next, and you can develop all your characters on the same saved game, so you're always earning gold and experience regardless of how you play. It's just a shame there's no drop-in option, given the sheer size of the game. Of course, that's if you can get a game started. The rather basic matchmaking options have been compounded by some terrible connection issues - despite trying all day and night on launch day, we were only able to get a couple of two-player games going for a couple of levels before the connections were lost.

This is a pretty major problem, since the game is clearly designed around the four-player co-op concept. It's perfectly playable for solo players, and there are few moments that feel like they need a full contingent of players to survive, but the appeal comes from the combination of silly humour and the raucous atmosphere of friends playing together. It's mostly a co-operative experience, but there are PvP arenas, and each time you find a princess you battle among yourselves for the right to kiss her. Basically, the player with the highest level wins - usually by blasting everyone with ferocious magic attacks the instant the battle begins.