Castlestorm: Definitive Edition Review
Following hot on the heels of KickBeat: Special Edition, CastleStorm: Definitive Edition is another updated version of a game that first came out last year, and another game from Zen Studios; the team most famous for creating (and ceaselessly updating) the Zen Pinball and Pinball F/X series. KickBeat was a thoroughly decent attempt at a rhythm action game, but it felt like it was made by people who didn’t really understand the genre they were working with. CastleStorm has no such problems, even though it’s basically a melding of three different genres. It’s staggeringly sharp and confident, especially in comparison to KickBeat.
This is an old school 2D tower defence romp, a side-scrolling beat ‘em up and an Angry Birds riff, all at the same time. If it managed to bypass you completely last year - no mean feat, considering it appeared on nearly every single gaming platform under the sun, including Playstation Vita and iOS - then be assured that now is as good a time as any to get involved. It’s a visually simple game that didn’t really need its new HD lick of paint, but that polish is appreciated nevertheless… if not as much as the twenty brand new story missions that also come bundled with this updated version.
CastleStorm has a plot, a story and there are characters, but for every second they’re on screen (which isn’t a small amount of time) there is a large panel in the top right hand corner of the screen inviting you to skip them… and skipping them is a very smart move. These aspects are not terrible by any measure but they’re fundamentally unnecessary if you’re older than ten or so, so being able to constantly (and quickly) bypass them is a big, big plus. It’s worth noting however that the cutscenes are very amiable at least, and may help struggling youngsters to persevere and get invested a little bit more.
At first, the gameplay is extraordinarily simple. You only need three controls initially: the left thumbstick (which aims your castle’s ballista) the right thumbstick (which moves the camera around) and the fire button. You need to use the bumper buttons (on Xbox One) to switch between projectiles, and pressing X spawns troops on the ground, but the core of this is really very simple indeed, and has clearly been primed for younger players. As it goes on, you’re gradually taught how to draw your bow in battle, how to shield yourself (and how to get your minions to shield themselves) and how to use the valuable magic spells.
The game actually expands quite quickly, but the process is immaculately paced: tuned just right, so that anyone - be it a hardcore tower defence master or an infant noob - won’t be intimidated by anything for even one second. There is a pretty brutal, iOS-style star rating system, but it’s never used to block your access to content as it so often is on iOS; it’s merely there to give you something to improve upon if you want to go back through the campaign levels. Which is exactly as it should be.
Castlestorm: Definitive Edition is inviting, it’s clever, it’s compulsive and it is structured so gracefully that nobody is going to play it and feel left out. It’s throughly, genuinely terrific; the kind of smart experiment that should have fallen on its backside, but instead works so well that if feels as if this mad hybrid is a dusty old industry staple. It only really makes one mistake: the sound of the donkeys perishing (you have to kill a few donkeys later on) is truly heinous. In a game so bright and breezy (and tasteful) it’s odd to hear pained yelps coming from a dying animal in the midst of it, instead of something broadly comedic or flippant. That minuscule error aside though, enjoy. This deserves to do well, so snap it up.
9/10
Review By Chet Roivas
