XBLA Awards: Braid can't rewind loss to Castle Crashers

by James Ransom-Wiley on Mar 23rd 2009 6:52PM

Castle Crashers recovered from a 4-month gimp to be crowned the Xbox Live Arcade "Game of the Year" in the second annual community voting awards. Somewhat surprisingly, Castle Crashers also managed to nab "Best Co-op Mode" despite being virtually unplayable online for four out of its seven months in release. On its way to top honors, The Behemoth's beat-em-up notably beat out its fellow indie nominee, Braid, which was famously dismissed by an American youth spokesperson.

Braid's losing streak continued in the "Best Single Player Game" category, which was claimed by Orange Box cutout Portal: Still Alive (oh right, it has "exclusive" challenge maps), but Jonathan Blow's timeless effort did mange to win "Best Innovation" amid stiff competition. (We were certain Kefling's innovative "use of Avatars" was a shoo-in.)

The complete list of awards and recipients is posted after the break.
And the Xbox Live Arcade Award goes to ...

Game of the Year
Castle Crashers

Best Versus Mode
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Best Single Player Game
Portal: Still Alive

Best Remake
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Best Original Game
Castle Crashers

Best Innovation
Braid

Best Graphics
Super Street Fight II Turbo HD Remix

Best Family Game
A Kingdom for Keflings

Best Co-op Mode
Castle Crashers

Source

Tags: a-kingdom-for-keflings, braid, capcom, castle-crashers, Microsoft, ssfiithdr, street-fighter, super-street-fighter-ii-turbo-hd-remix, the-behemoth, xbla, xbla-awards, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (63)

Does I smell butthurt?

do i smell an anime geek?

Though I enjoyed both games immensely, Braid was better than Castle Crashers. Especially with the online issues that CC had.

Best Innovation, seriously? Braid deserves to be in other categories and not this one. Though compared to other XBLA games in the running, maybe Braid was most innovative.

I wouldn't really call Briad innovative. The very small amount of time i spent with it it just seemed like super mario mixed with POP sands of time (the whole rewinding thing) . But yeah not many Arcade games really pushing boundaries as far as i can see.

Looking at that list has me wondering if it should have gotten Best Original Game. I don't disagree with the innovation thing. Each level forced you to think in ways to solve it. The puzzles themselves were innovative imo.

@mongoos: I thought the puzzles were clever too, but a puzzle game having "good puzzles" doesn't make those puzzles or the game innovative. Puzzles in a puzzle-based game SHOULD be clever.

Though I guess it depends what you define to be innovative. I think Portal is innovative due to its unique game mechanic.

Maybe Braid won best innovation since it was the first time since Space Giraffe that a game developer publicly masturbated in video game form? The amount of developer self pleasure being stroked into that game was enough batter to make 15 more octomoms.

God is dead...

castle is fun and looks good , but Braid was better.

World 4 & 5 are pretty fucking innovative. Ending too.

@lasersanchez: Meh, the ending didn't blow my mind as much as it did others'. It seemed straight out of Memento, in my opinion. I wouldn't say the story was innovative -- it was a convoluted, poetic mess. Those worlds were pretty cool, though. Just not comfortable using the word "innovative" for any of this stuff.

Other than the busted online co-op, I thought Castle Crashers was one of the best XBLA games of the year. Braid? Maybe I'm a simpleton who "doesn't get it", but I played through the whole thing and it didn't make a positive impression on me.

It was the "Epilogue" that killed what a great story it was. That stupid cloud level reading through all the books. It should have been over before that, the castle level. I think the story to that point was amazing.

I wouldn't call you a simpleton for not caring for Braid, it just wasn't your thing.

Sure the online sucked, but Castle Crashers was best played with friends in the same room, like good games should.

I completely agree with you on that. I feel like that was always the best part of games and it just seemed to take to the back burner.

With voice chat, it's just the same as having them in the same room.

This is my favorite part about modern gaming, the online experience brings back the old dorm room experience even though me and those buddies are thousands of miles apart now.

Still doesn't beat having people there. There's nothing like having your arse handed to you, by your button mashing little brother at Virtual Fighter, or sitting around a friends house with two playstations hooked together to play Wipeout 2097 while eating pizza.

Well, I gotta agree. Even though I think Castle Crashers was broken as hell, I still enjoyed it much more than Braid. I finished Braid legit and found some of the sections to be interesting and/or amusing - but I don't think it deserves anywhere near the praise it got. It was simply OK in my book.

Played both but this is a well deserved win for Castle Crashers despite the multiplayer bugs. On a related note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0H33tJ5K60#t=1m8s

That episode HAWP really does sum up my feelings towards Braid, and is comically topical.

Braid is one of the best games of recent years. Losing to Castle Crashers is bunk.

Aside from the technical problems, i can see why. Castle Crashers includes online co-op (and local co-op, right?), makes it more playable, with higher replay value by far over Braid, which, being puzzle-centric and all, really hurts in the replayability department

There are more to games than just replayability. I had enough extra fun with Braid on the first run-through (though I did enjoy CC a lot as well) that CC could never make up for it no matter how much longer I was able to put into the game.

Truth be told though, I never really had the motivation to go through CC more than once even with the co-op.

They are both good games, both deserve awards but only one can win. This Joystiq article seems like trolling.

Respectable list. Although I would've liked to see a variety of games on there, but oh well.

how did braid loose out best graphics, it was a stunning game, and it should have gotten game of the year, i love castle crashers, but i couldnt even play it online for months without having it cut out on me.

Castle Crashers definitely won it for me. I haven't played it online, so I never experienced any of those problems, but playing it locally is some of the most fun I've had since Streets of Rage 2. I'd even go as far to call it better than games like Streets of Rage and Golden Axe.

I honestly never got into Braid at all.

HD Remix is amazing.

Hopefully Capcom recreates the success with remakes of their other past fighting titles.

SIGH. I'm getting so sick of these bullshit comments about Castle Crashers being 'unplayable' or whatever stupid exaggeration you decide to use. I ONLY played it online, with 4 people most of the time, and it would disconnect about 2/3 times per day, which when you consider the fact that I often played it from 10-12 in the morning till very late at night, is much fucking better than a game like GoW2 or even Halo 3 at times...

Now stop fucking bitching

EDIT: Gratuitous.

Dude, you really need to learn that your experience does not equal everyone else's experience.

The biggest annoyance for me (though the disconnects were there own fair share of annoying) was that about 20% of the time I played, when I logged back on to play again the next time my entire save game would be erased. All my animal and weapon unlocks were gone, all my characters were back to level 1, and only the first level was unlocked. It happened at least a half dozen times before I gave up and waited for the patch (and I did eventually play through the game after the patch FINALLY came).

But FFS man, if that's not completely and utterly broken, then nothing is. Your anecdotal evidence means shit to me because it didn't bring back my or any of my friend's game saves.

I find it hard to believe that bugs like that could be so common when I played it non-stop for months and never ran into any problems. It happened to one of my friends once, and he looked online and found a way to fix it within minutes... Try Google in future

Actually the loss of gamesaves due to glitching was a very common complaint for the game. As was disconnects and completely resetting the game should a connection with the host occur. Of course your game save never REALLY was erased, instead like the infamous DOA4 game save bug, the system merely "hid" your game save so that the game couldn't see it. If you didn't turn your system off completely and load your save before logging into Live, the save could remain hidden. Of course a new save overrites said save.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169652
http://personalgaming.blogspot.com/2008/09/damn-castle-crashers-save-bug.html

Just think, top two responses on a google search for Castle Crashers Bug.

In other words, just because YOU were immune to the issues doesn't mean they didn't exist. For some, the issues were so common of an occurance that the patch which took three months was essentially the true launch of the game.

eh I dont really like braid. I think it sucks imo

Good thing Castle Crashers FTW

Braid is overrated.

Oh Soulja boy, you make my brain bleed.

Can't those of you who "don't like Braid" just admit that you don't like puzzle games or thinking in general?

I dont like braid because overly dramatic garbage pile. all the guy did was combine sands of time with mario and added in a little emo for good measure.

it should in no way be getting the praise it recived

Actually, I enjoy puzzle games. And thinking is one of my favorite activities, next only to luring bums into busy streets with a trail of McDonalds french fries.

I didn't like Braid because I thought it was far too up it's own ass in pretentious bullshit. I'm sure if I slimed myself over Neo Genesis Evancryfor26episodes, Braid would be right up my alley. But as it stood, it walked the fine line between "making art" and "making a game." And while it remained sober enough to walk that line, just couldn't quite figure out what it wanted to be.

Aww, don't start with that shit. I liked Braid but what you're saying is the equivalent of, "Can't those of you who 'don't like Portal' just admit that you don't like puzzle games or thinking in general?"

Different strokes for different folks. Just because someone doesn't appreciate something as much as you do doesn't mean they're dumb.

I just recently finished playing through all four Moneky Island games, and am going to be getting the new Broken Sword DS game soon. :) I'll even be buying that Indiana Jones Wii game just for the Fate of Atlantis.

I can assure you that my dislike of Braid has nothing to do with the fact it's a puzzle game.

Maybe Braid won best innovation since it was the first time since Space Giraffe that a game developer publicly masterbated in video game form? The amount of developer self pleasure being stroked into that game was enough batter to make 15 more octomoms.

Ooops, wrong place.

Eh, it's ok. When you're on a roll, you're on a roll.

Shep! Where have you been? I haven't seen you this vocal for a while.

Not enough Rez on that list.

Good to see HDR getting the love it deserves.

"American youth spokesperson" - it's brilliant and subtle comedy like this that places Joystiq on top of my daily web food trough. Thank you.

As for the story, I would imagine that Braid would have fared better were it not for the self-importance of its intellectual poseur creator. This shouldn't affect the voting, as the games should be judged on their own merits, but I'm sure it did.

Disappointed that Bionic Commando didn't win anything. :( I think it's a better remake than SF2THDR, 'cause everything was remade in Rearmed, while SF2 just had redrawn graphics and gameplay tweaks (not to say it was a bad game).

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XBLA Awards: Braid can't rewind loss to Castle Crashers

Reader Comments (63)

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 6:54PM (Unverified) said

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