While admittedly there wasn’t a ton of indie stuff to cover at this year’s Comic-Con in gorgeous San Diego, I was able to comb the convention enough times to find a few indie beacons floating in the vast ocean of the show floor.

One of those shining lights was the nice-sized booth for The Behemoth, who was showing off both their upcoming third title BattleBlock Theater and the upgraded Castle Crashers coming to PSN later this year–supposedly really, really soon. I was able to get some hands-on time with both and in this post, I will be touching on the ladder.

Castle Crashers debuted in 2008, taking the Xbox Live Arcade by storm and in the process (alongside Braid) raising the console digital distribution market to new heights. So, is the new feature-enriched PSN version worth the wait for PS3 owners? In a word, you betcha!

The Behemoth has really added some nice additions including the new Volleyball minigame extrapolated from the one-time campaign experience in the XBLA version. Now, it’s a totally separate mode complete with multiple stages, settings for teams, number of players on each side, winning score, number of games and other options (check out the features list here.) Playing it with a friend against the AI, we quickly discovered strategy would be a big part of winning. A new feature we stumbled upon and quickly took advantage of was the ability to spike. When timed right, players near the net jump up and at the peak can swing their weapon sending a devastating downward strike toward the other team’s side. These become huge in scoring as it’s a nearly impossible maneuver to counter and often times the ball is in a position to be struck by whichever team gets there first.

Team Arena is another new offering, allowing players to play 2v2 or 1v3, instead of just the free-for-all style available in the original release. Teams are denoted by what the characters have strapped to their back, whether it be banners, street signs or stick bombs; just look for the bloke with your matching back-wear and you’ll know your in friendly company. Additionally, we checked out the new arrow-only arena mode–the name of which currently escapes me (Sharpshooter?)–which has you running around firing arrows at your enemies and grabbing strength power-ups and fruit to try and gain an upper-hand.

All in all, some great new features and that’s completely ignoring the already amazing campaign the title totes. Still without a release date, Castle Crashers will be a must have for Playstation 3 owners..whenever it does arrive.