I did three very important things this weekend: I finished Resident Evil 5 and Castle Crashers with my good buddy Jerome, and I caught a fucking cold (hopefully not from my good buddy Jerome, because that would mean he drugged me and french kissed me in my sleep). The first 2 things were awesome though. Here are some thoughts on both games.

Resident Evil 5 took us quite a while to finish, but the pace of the game was still pretty fluid. The game is a perfect blend of action, puzzle solving, equipment management and exploration. The graphics are great, the cut scenes are well crafted, the difficulty is generally spot on. BUT the bad guys are fucking awful. The first boss dude is an annoying Joker type psycho who just made me angry. Then there’s the braless chick with a russian accent. COME ON! Those went out of style in the 70s goddammit! And the last guy is just the worst final boss ever.

Without spoiling anything, let’s just say the very last part of the game almost ruined my enjoyment of the whole game. The button mashing gimmicks and the fact that the bad dude just won’t fucking die almost made me destroy the disc. But all in all, still a great great couch co-op game.

As for Castle Crashers, it’s a RPG-ified Double Dragon style brawler, with loot, levels, magic powers and awesome cartoony graphics. We played through the whole thing in 2 sittings. It was tons of fun mixed with some tiny peaks of frustration.

The frustration all comes from the fact that the game is a bit too 2D at times, and it’s easy to miss targets or to even get confused about where your character is when there’s a lot going on in the screen at the same time. But other than that, it is a total blast to play. The humor, the great fighting, the epic action and the awesome music make Castle Crashers a must-own Xbox Live Arcade title.

I told you a couple of weeks ago about me buying a PSP just to be able to play Soul Calibur Broken Destiny. Well I finally got Broken Destiny and I have things to say about it. Good things mostly. Things that I will say in my next post, adequately titled “Tiny Reviews – Soul Calibur Broken Destiny extravaganza”.

That’s it for today.

– Dan