Castle Crashers
My favourite streams are the ones with games I get to play with my friends. It sounds corny, but having fun with people I care about is a highlight of video games. It gives us a way to connect over thousands of miles, laugh at something together, and enjoy each other’s company. Castle Crashers provided a great way to do that, and though I’m about to tear into it for a number of reasons, I very much appreciate what the game is and how successful it is at its core goal - facilitating me having fun with my friends, near and far.
Pictured: My friends dying while I have fun
Castle Crashers is a hack-and-slash game where you play as one of four knights. After invaders raid your castle and steal princesses, you and your fellow knights are tasked by the king to journey far and wide to retrieve the princesses and restore the kingdom. Along the way, the knights must work together to defeat bosses, navigate battles, and acquire better weapons, gear, and attack combos. The knights quest takes them to a variety of locales, from the forest pictured above to a river to everywhere in between.
Also this
Castle Crashers is a very loud game. In its art, its music, its sound effects, and its sense of humour, it is very present and works to grab the player’s attention. There are bright colours, a very distinct art style, coupled with crude humour that forces the player to pay attention. For players who like that style, it does a good job, though it can be off-putting if that’s not something that tends to draw the player in.
The gameplay is, in its own way, also loud, being an almost non-stop series of hack-and-slash battles. The player can choose different weapons or combat abilities, and build their character to support the particular build they want to play. Equipment found along the way also helps improve a character, though I ultimately ended up doing just fine jabbing at my attack button repeatedly until everything around me was dead. While the boss battle mechanics can vary in interesting ways, it’s often a slog to get to them, carving through very similar battles and a seemingly endless swarm of enemies over and over. The repetitiveness is easy to overlook if the game’s style engages you, but if not, it becomes a tedious slog.
In many ways, the game feels like it’s showing its age. The style and the humour all point to a different idea of what a comedy game could be, even when compared to another of The Behemoth games that we’ve covered in this series, Battleblock Theatre . It is in your face, forcing you to not look away as you mash buttons to get to a boss.
Speaking of showing age…
All of the above, of course, comes with the caveat that, when I review a game, I try to review based on whether or not a game ultimately accomplishes the goals it sets out to achieve. Though a lot of this game isn’t really my style, I can’t necessarily fault it for having a different sense of humour, or for being a little more present than I would like. Describing its mechanics as repetitive, though, is fair, and going into detail about its plot? This seems fair.
Castle Crashers really shows not only its age, but its source in its main plot. Four knights are on a quest to rescue big-eyed, big-bosomed princesses who, every time they are on screen, are either yelling “help me” or watching men fight for who has the right to kiss them. The above screenshot captures one such fight. When we came to it, it was unexpected to the point that, for several seconds, we couldn’t figure out to make the game advance, because the idea of fighting each other for the princess was ridiculous. Ultimately, we figured it out, the princess was smooched, and on we went, but the underlying problem is still there.
The plot of the game is rooted in a deeply misogynistic worldview. It makes the game impossible to enjoy for what it’s trying to be. It can’t be a light-hearted hack-and-slash with some occasionally tedious elements, because ultimately, the knights are on a quest to kill each other for the right to assault a woman. It’s a plot element that, even for 2008, was trite and questionable. Playing in 2022, it threw me out of the game entirely.
It is worth asking if knowing a game is being comedic or tongue-in-cheek lowers the bar for misogyny. After all, this isn’t high drama, with women being killed to advance the plot, or tossed to the side when they’re no longer useful. It’s a silly, light-hearted game about knights. I’d argue, though, that that makes the misogyny more dangerous. Because it’s masked in laughter and comedy, it’s harder to recognise that the elements of that joke are perpetuating misogyny. We’re distracted by the idea we should be laughing, and miss that there’s more to think about here. The reality is that Castle Crashers perpetuates harmful stereotypes of both men and women, and in doing so, crosses an unacceptable line into misogyny. Once it became clear what this game was and what it wanted to say, it stopped having any kind of fun, and instead, felt like participating in something foul.
Developer: The Behemoth
Genre: Hack-And-Slash, Adventure
Year: 2008
Country: United States
Language: English
Play Time: 7 Hours