The 50 Best Games: 46 - Castle Crashers

The beat-em up genre is one that is often described fondly only through the heavily-filtered lenses of nostalgia and time. In reality, it's a concept that was summarily improved and made nearly obsolete as we got better and more robust 3D engines. Moving 2D characters around a quasi-3D environment was clunky and imprecise with only a couple of notable exceptions. That genre mostly fell by the wayside until the resurgence of smaller, indie games with Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network.

One of the early successes of that was Castle Crashers in 2008. It's quirky, over-the-top cartoon visuals with the bombastic and grand soundtrack made this one of the best this genre had to offer. It was satisfying enough as a beat-em up that had a ton of different and secret weapons so you aren't just repeatedly punching and throwing enemies. Add in the fact that there are a dozen fun characters that all have different upgradeable magic abilities, and you have one of the most unique and memorable games of the seventh generation of consoles.

I had an unprecedented amount of fun leveling up as many characters as possible, playing co-op online for the umpteenth time, and searching up and down for every last weapon and adorable animal buddy. Plus, this is one of the handful of games with a soundtrack that I'd still listen to today. It was a wonderful experience that, while possibly a product of a specific time and place, stands out as one of the best.