Have you heard of this new game on Xbox Live Arcade called Castle Crashers? Yeah, its pretty popular right now. Over the weekend I had a marathon Castle Crashers session. Sunday I played CC with my cousin Matt (DragonStrikeZ) for I dunno, 10 hours or something. We played through the entire game and I finished it with my Red Knight and he used the Orange Knight. I was completely hooked on the game that day. To further my addiction I played a nice co-op session with the Jameses (jimb0 and 100th_Bullet) on Monday.

I've been having a blast with the game, to say the least. If you know me, you'll know that I love me some beat em up action. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, the Simpsons, Alien vs Predator, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Streets of Rage, King of Dragons, I love all those games. Castle Crashers isn't just another beat em up. I believe the game is further proof that if you add RPG elements to any genre of game, it makes the game better. The leveling, item collection and character unlockables all make the game very addicting. Even if the game didn't have any of the RPG elements, it would still be a great game, the leveling and unlockables just ensure that you'll come back to it again, and again, and again.

My experience with the game hasn't been completely positive though. You may have heard that people have had troubles getting into online matches of the game (happened to me a couple times) and there have been reports of people losing all of their collected items and animal orbs. Well, it happened to me. All the animal orbs and weapons I had unlocked in the massive 10-12 hour gaming session I had on Sunday were lost when I played some online co-op on Monday. The only things I kept were the animal orb and weapon I had equipped on my character when I last played the game. For whatever reason I still have my level 40 Red Knight and I have all the other characters I unlocked, but I've lost everything else. I have no idea why this happened, but to put it bluntly; it fucking sucks.

Because of this massive glitch, I don't think I'm going to play the game again until the Behemoth releases a patch. I don't want to reacquire everything, only to lose it all once again. If there is anyone out there that would like to help me reacquire all my animal orbs (had them all) and weapons (had the majority of them) whenever a patch is released, I would really appreciate it. (Especially if you have the flame sword from the end of the game. I missed that thing TWICE even though I was right on top of it, slamming the X button).

On to other games without game ending glitches; Resistance Fall of Man and Final Fantasy Tactics A2. Very briefly I'll say that I'm still playing FFTA2 and I've put it about 120 hours now. I've been doing a lot of side quests (have about 250 completed now) and I'm still loving it. Master Monk FTW

I rented Resistance a couple weeks ago and I finally got around to finishing it over the weekend. Overall my experience with the game was very positive. I didn't find it too hard, although the difficulty level jumped a bit too high in the last couple areas and I almost got into "throwing the controller against the wall" mode a few times. I like the design of the Chimera and the varying types of enemies you face throughout the game. The weapon variety is pretty cool (Hailstorm, Sapper) but I wish I could use the red lightning gun the Chimera have later in the game. I really like the premise of the game and the Chimera are pretty interesting. That said it'd be nice to know some more about them, like where they came from and what their purpose is. I also didn't like the 3rd person narrative and the stills in the cutscenes weren't doing it for me. The art style seems a bit cartoony at times, I was getting feelings of Timesplitters several times in the game. Not necessarily a bad thing (Timesplitters is great) but certainly not what I was expecting. After finishing Resistance, I am looking forward to playing the sequel this November.

Some new announcements are coming out of Leipzig and one of them involves one of my favorite RPG series, Suikoen.  There aren't a whole lot of details, and I haven't seen any screens or video, but the next Suikoden game will be on the DS!  Currently titled Genso Suikoden Tierkreis in Japan, the art style is said to be similar to Suikoden I and II and also features the 108 Stars of Destiny. Check out the 1UP news story

I saw this posted at a Transformers website and thought I'd share it with you guys.  Someone created an animation mimicking the Lucky Star anime opening but using Decepticons instead.  Just watch the videos and see for yourself.

First, the original Lucky Star anime opening:

I saw a bright orange Lamborghini Gallardo on the way home from work today.  It was awesome.

That is all.

I received Soul Calibur IV (PS3 version) in the mail today and here are my brief, initial impressions.  I first went into training mode and messed around with a few characters.  I tried Ivy and noticed she has completely changed and almost none of her moves are the same.  I used to play as her and Spawn in Soul Calibur 2 on Xbox.  I was really good with her too but I'm going to have to spend a lot of time relearning everything now.  I never played Soul Calibur III, so I tried out Zasalamel because he looks cool and I love scythes.  I tried him out in Training Mode first and some of his moves look totally awesome and seem to do quite a lot of damage.

I proceeded to go into the arcade mode to test my skills, or lack thereof, with Zasalamel.  I managed to do pretty damned good for my first time using that character, and really having no idea what his moves are, except for a couple.  The fun stopped when I got to stage 7.  Siegfried at stage 6 was hard enough, but the Apprentice is practically unbeatable as far as I'm concerned.  He's extremely fast and powerful, as well as being very cheap.  He likes to do maybe 2 or 3 different moves repeatedly, and his favorite one is an uppercut.  He loves sending you into the air with his lightsaber and then hitting you 1 or 2 more times as you are falling to the ground for extra damage.  Then when you're on the ground, sometimes he'll do some force power move that creates a large shockwave of energy that does a lot of damage.  All this goes on in a matter of seconds because he's very fast.  I continuously lost and restart and got beat twice in a row, every time.  I think I managed to defeat him once or twice, but only got lucky with an unblockable attack that took like half his life.  After about 10 tries, I was ready to throw the controller into the wall and gave up.  Either Zasalamel is not the character for me, or I need A LOT of practice with him.  He looks a bit fast than Nightmare, Astaroth, Rock and those big bruisers, but he's apparently just as slow and leaves himself open a lot.

After getting my ass handed to me by the Sith Apprentice several times I shut the game off.  As cool as the Star Wars characters are, I don't think they belong in the game.  They just seem too different and don't fit the Soul Calibur universe.  Plus they have advantages over all other characters with their force power gauge (or whatever it is).  I feel like they are sort of ruining the game, especially because they are so heavily advertised and its obvious the only reason they are in the game, is to promote it to people who wouldn't normally play Soul Calibur and who are fans of Star Wars.  Maybe they should have been added as downloadable content later in the game.  You may say "well SC2 had Spawn, Link and Heihachi who aren't from Soul Calibur."  That is true, but they weren't as heavily promoted and they fit in the game and the Soul Calibur universe much better.  I mean come on, lightsabers versus swords??  Maybe the SW characters will grow on me the more time I spend playing the game, but as it is right now, I prefer them out of my Soul Calibur.

Ghostbusters!  This isn't exactly video game related (well there is a new game coming out for PS3 and Xbox 360) but I just thought I'd let you guys know that I just pre-ordered the entire "The Real Ghostbusters" cartoon on DVD from Time Life.  The set includes ALL episodes of the Real Ghostbusters as well as a ton of bonus features.  Here are the details:

• All episodes of The Real Ghostbusters.
• All episodes from Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters
• Unique collector's box with exclusive art

  

• The original pilot which was never before aired
• 21 on-camera commentary tracks with producers, voice actors, writers, animators and production personnel
• 5 exclusive documentaries
• 86 episode introductions
• 16-page booklets include episode synopses, trivia and art for each episode.
• Plus scripts, storyboards, image galleries, music & effects audio tracks and much more
• Interviews with J. Michael Straczynski (Writer & Story editor), Maurice La Marche (Voice of Egon Spengler), Laura Summer (Voice of first Janine Melnitz), Kath Soucie (Voice of second Janine Melnitz) and many others

They haven't decided on the cover art yet, and the people of tvshowsondvd.com get to vote on the two available box arts.  Head on over to the site HERE and cast your vote if you like.  I voted for the firehouse design.

The set isn't exactly cheap though.  It will cost $161.99 if you preorder (or $179.99 if you don't) and you can only buy it on TimeLife.com  It's kinda steep but I mean you are getting 25 discs and the ENTIRE series which includes around 140 episodes, so I think it's a pretty good deal.  I used to watch this cartoon all the time in the late 80s/early90s back when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was still on.  I've actually rewatched a few of these episodes recently and they hold up extremely well.  I can't wait for this set to be released.