So my roommate bought Castle Crashers the other day. We've been playing quite a bit, and I'm level 15, he's 21. Really fun game so far, and some levels can be pretty challenging. Great art direction, music, and just a very fun beat-em-up.

Anyway, today a friend of my roommate wanted to play with him. So we thought we'd be able to play local + online with his friend simultaneously. My roommate who owns the xbox has an xbox live account, I do not. As we quickly found out, even though my character is on his xbox, i need my own xbox live gold account simply in order to be able to use the character i already have online when playing with him. Why doesn't microsoft set it up so it'll let me piggyback on my roommate's gold account?

Without a gold account, I start at level 1 and can't save my progress. This is a very stupid and exploitative way to handle local/online mixed play. It's amazing how microsoft gets a reputation for having the definitive online service while pulling crap like this. Just a little rant.. that's all.

mo money

I agree, that's pretty lame. Don't most online games let you tag along?

I know, it sucks. I wish a guest could use some of your characters to play, instead of being forced to use a level 1.

This is fishy and inconsistent. Some games even require a profile/account for the 2nd player in local co-op

I don't think there's any conspiracy going on aside from the fact that Castle Crasher just have crappy way of setting up and store your char. I lost my level 35 character and several level 20+ char awhile back because the game just seems to get really confuse keeping track of save and gamertag.

Okay, can you name me a game that allows you to have two people on one xbox play online with one gold account, while being able to save progress? I'm genuinely not sure if there are any, that's why i'm asking. If not it seems like a limitation put in place by microsoft. Like I said in the OP, requiring each player to have gold account to play mixed local/online is a pretty crappy setup.