This week on Live

Dude, I'm loving me some Xbox Live this week.

First, I played the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo, and man, this game kicks so much ass. In terms of what the demo offered, it wasn't much in the way of stuff we haven't already seen: chopping up stormtroopers, TIE fighters roaring past you, and lots of lightsaber gimmickry. What's refreshing about all that is how well it's done in this game. I think SW:FU embraces what poor movie-based games fail to acknowledge, which is the fact that a game is only as good as its mechanics first and the source material second. The force grip ability is intuitive, and seeing as how the Apprentice's powers only grow as the storyline progresses, I'm eagerly awaiting the moment I can down an Imperial-class Star Destroyer by simply holding down the right trigger.

Not a Super-class Star Destroyer. Those things are like, five hundred times the size of a Victory-class Star Destroyer. Star Wars geekery, blue milk, and Sarlacc couldn't digest Boba Fett because of his armor, and all that.

Also, I read in Play Magazine that the Apprentice is bad-ass, on the scale of Strider-like awesomeness. That's a pretty specific and very encouraging comparison, seeing as how Kratos and Dante are the usual suspects.

So yeah, Force Unleashed was way cool. But what's really been capturing my attention is the XBLA title Castle Crashers.

Braid was cool. So was Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Retro-styled games seem to be making a comeback thanks to the Nintendo DS, and of course, creator-enabled XNA titles on Live Arcade, but like many things, there's always danger of saturation. It's already happened to the "casual" music games, what with Neversoft and Harmonix rushing to sign exclusive artists to their respective franchises. Pretty soon, like all things, I have a feeling these rhythm-based games will go the way of the slap bracelet and collapse under its own weight.

The problem with this competitive one-upping is that the byproducts that rear their ugly heads all lack the one quality which made the original so distinctive: heart. When Megaman 9's creative direction was unveiled, I was both fascinated and skeptical. The game, complete with 8-bit graphics and chiptunes, and deliberate system slowdown to boot, rests on a line that borders a breed of meta we haven't yet seen in a video game. Retro-styled games are fun and all that, but there has to be some kind of innovation and a forgoing of self-awareness that allows the buying fanbase some kind of faith in the forward momentum of the genre. Once stagnation sets in, the lines between laziness and homage become more and more unclear, until the audience itself isn't sure whether they're enjoying a game due to the merits of the gameplay or if it's just nostalgia making them see what they want to see. This is going to be somewhat of a generalization, but look what's happening to games coming from Japan. If there's any kind of evolution taking place, it's more of a allaying-natural selection process rather than of its own volition.

Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin, then, have made quite possibly the most charming Japanese game to come out this year. Castle Crashers is reminiscent of brawlers such as Streets of Rage where your character basically puts the smackdown on wave after wave of bad guys, with a giant finger on-screen telling you to "GO" after you've cleared a zone of enemies. Although the gameplay appears stock at first, what makes Castle Crashers so straight-up fun is how it keeps you on your toes. The boss battles and levelling up always provide you with something new, but the true fun lies in the cooperative multiplayer, where timed-button presses put a unique twist on simply pressing "A" to steal a life from your partner.

What's important is that Castle Crashers doesn't feel retro for the sake of retro. After sitting down with the game for a mere five minutes, I could gather that this game couldn't have possibly existed in any other form. Without the taint of the aforementioned self-awareness, the creators are able to focus solely on what works and what doesn't work in their game. Nothing, from the gameplay, character abilities, and above all, the excellent Miyazaki-meets-Uglydoll animation, feels out of place. Unlike Braid, where I was bothered by the lingering hint of pretension lingering in the air (admit it, you know it's there), the feeling Castle Crashers evoked for me was pure amusement. I could count the times I had a giant grin on my face while playing this game, and I suspect there's more to come.

At one point early in the game, you have the option of entering an arena that pits you against an onslaught of barbarian attackers, with two giant cats on either side lazily swatting at you should you venture too close to the edges. Castle Crashers never really explores this.

And refreshingly enough, for the first time in a long time, I didn't demand any kind of explanation from the game. I just wanted to keep playing, and that was good enough for me. Download Castle Crashers now, dagnabbit.