Castle Crashers First Look

Castle Crashers has been one of the bright lights on Xbox Live Arcade since it was released last August. The stylized side-scrolling brawler offered a winning mix of solid action, quirky charm, and four-player co-op play. Unfortunately, PlayStation 3 owners haven't been able to get in on the fun--until now. The Behemoth is taking the wraps off of Castle Crashers for the PlayStation 3 at Comic-Con today and is showing off the first playable version of the upcoming downloadable title. We paid the California-based developer a visit for a first look.

For those of you who aren't already familiar with the game, Castle Crashers follows four knights as they head out to rescue their respective special ladies, who've been princess-napped (a common problem in games). The road to rescue sends the knights up against hordes of enemies, but with teamwork, a little help from their animal friends, a variety of different weapons and magic, and some leveling up, a happy ending is guaranteed. The game takes a light action role-playing approach to the head busting by letting you earn experience and level different stats on your knight, such as strength, defense, agility, and magic. The result on the Xbox 360 was a fun game that got even better when you played cooperatively with friends online. As a bonus, The Behemoth also included an arena to fight with friends and a food-gorging minigame.

All of the above is on its way to the PlayStation 3, with the appropriate tweaks, such as trophy support, for Sony's platform. The Behemoth isn't offering much in terms of information on exclusive content for the PlayStation 3 game beyond saying that it's still to be determined. The air of mystery also extends to the game's release date, which the team is keeping quiet about for the moment. The best we could get out of them was that they're working to get the game out as soon as they can and that development is going well.

As far as how the PS3 game looks and plays, the demo we checked out was already running well and certainly looked to be on par with the Xbox 360 game. The action is smooth and responsive, and the colorful visuals look as crisp as ever. From the look of things, Castle Crashers should be a good addition to the PlayStation Network library. A straight port of the Xbox 360 game would be a lot of fun, but we're hopeful that the PS3 version might also benefit from some additional content. Look for more on Castle Crashers for the PlayStation 3 in the months to come.