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.