CastleStorm review: More like CastleParty, eh...I'm not funny

CastleStorm is the latest game from Zen Studios, the studio behind many great pinball games—like Pinball FX2, Zen Pinball 2, Marvel Pinball, and most recently, Star Wars Pinball—but CastleStorm is not a pinball game, it is a real-time action strategy game and a refreshing change from the pinnacle pinball studio. But change can be tricky, so, is this change a good thing?

Yes. CastleStorm is a fun blend of action and strategy, mixing Angry Birds and more casual MOBA-esque games, giving players multiple ways of defeating their enemies. The object of the main game is twofold: either destroy the enemy's castle or steal their flag (and occasionally more specific objectives). Destroying a castle is where the comparison to Angry Birds comes in as you use a combination of different projectiles in order to topple enemy castles—like exploding apples, battering sheep, and bundles of trash—but if destroying the castle isn't your style, you can steal the enemy's flag instead by sending various troops, who cost food,  to break through the castle doors, steal the flag and return it to your castle without dying—you can even get down and dirty yourself, dropping into the action as one of a few different heroes. It may sound simple and easy, but it's not so easy because the enemy can do the same things to you.

In most cases, you're battling against another castle with similar abilities to you—sometimes you're just defending against an onslaught of ground troops or trying to kill as many troops as possible within a specific time limit—and you have to pay attention to not only what you're planning, but what the enemy is planning too—if multitasking isn't your thing, you might as well walk away right now. If you focus too heavily on either taking down the enemy's castle or stealing their flag, you may very well find yourself defeated before you know it; a balance between ground and air is needed for true success. For the most part, the controls do a good job of using the minimal buttons to control a lot of commands, but in hectic situations, I found myself accidently sending out a troop or shooting an unwanted projectile and the waste of a troop or loss of a projectile can be detrimental when a battle is on equal grounds. But no matter what, the game is fair and I never once found myself frustrated by anything other than my own poor choices.

Poor choices (or better put, risky choices) come into play a lot because friendly fire is always on. If you shoot a projectile at enemy troops and misfire, hitting your own troops, you troops will take the damage as if they were the enemy. This may sound annoying, but it adds an important layer to the challenge because it removes the ability to just shoot off projectiles willy-nilly without any consequence. In addition to the challenge brought from friendly fire, there are the usual difficulty levels and while both Casual and Normal provide you with a visible arc showing where projectiles will land, Hard forces you to fire blindly, making it much easier to miss your mark, especially in heated situations requiring fast thinking.

But you can also lessen the challenge by upgrading weapons, troops, spells, and various castle rooms. I love any game with the ability to upgrade and level up items, characters and so on, no matter how simple the system. In CastleStorm, gold earned from levels can be spent on upgrades and, especially in later levels, upgraded abilities are key to success. In addition to upgrading and leveling, you can also customize different pre-built castles or design your own from scratch. The pre-built castles are good, but you'll have to put in the work to make a great castle and function is much more important that esthetic because there is rarely a reason, if any, to look at your own castle during battles. The customization options are limited, but they offer enough to make every castle unique structurally; however, visually, there's little to differentiate one castle from another.

There is a story in CastleStorm and there is also a reason why I haven't mentioned it until just now: it's not good; it's also not bad, it just is. Over the course of the two campaigns—which involve playing as both factions, Knights and Vikings—a lighthearted story is played out in cutscenes usually at the start of every level. The story is occasionally cute and funny in a dumb way, but more often than not, it just gets in the way of the game and offers little added character; thankfully, you can skip cutscenes and get right to the action if the story isn't doing anything for you either.

I was excited about CastleStorm since the day it was announced—I've been a fan of Zen Studios for years and it was nice seeing something other than pinball from the guys and gals over at Zen—and I'm happy the game has come out so well. In addition to the campaign mode, there is also a Skirmish mode, two Survival modes, and both online and offline multiplayer. The game can get a tad repetitive and eventually you'll have to grind in order to upgrade different abilities and your castle, but there's a lot of bang for your buck in CastleStorm and if the basic gameplay is up your alley, it's worth every penny.

*CastleStorm was reviewed on Xbox 360 and is available now for 800 MS points.

CastleStorm (XBLA)