As i said in the review of the first Slap Them All, they quickly made a follow up game 2 years later (as in 2022 Mr. Nutz Studio released that awful Joe & Mac port-remake), simply titled Asterix & Obelix: Slap Em All! 2, and while i was planning to review this next year… by coincidence i ended up playing it and finishing it far earlier than planned, so
Sure, that will leave Mission Babylon as the only new Asterix & Obelix game by Microids to review next year, but whatever,
This time around the plot is original, and concerns the theft of an important Roman insigna, the Aquila (literally “Eagle”, a golden eagle insigna), which is blamed on Lutetian friends of the Gaul duo, and so Asterix & Obelix venture to find out who actually stole the Aquila and why, before they execute the entire Lutetian village as retribution, so important is the Aquila in political leverage terms for the Roman Empire than losing it is seen as a great public shame for the reigning emperor.
It’s not a bad plot, it’s fine, and at least it’s not just Ceasar once again throwing a scheme to finally conquer those pesky Gaul villagers.
Gameplay is the same in terms of mechanics, but it has been improved.
The stamina system is gone, for the better since it was really easy to exploit it anyway in the first game, now you have energy, yes, but is for a screen clearing ultimate move, or to activate a Fury Mode that buffs you for a limited time (as many segments of the Fury bar you have).
Both Asterix and Obelix have a good divekick for crowd control, now you can charge the heavy/special attacks, some special moves are easier to input, and some are repurposed to use mid-air only but still have use, returning enemy types and new ones are more aggressive and sport new moves they hadn’t before, and new enemies block and dodge more efficiently, so immediatly it starts off being more challenging and levels less long for the sake of preying on your patience.
even the lowest tier types like the small brigands have better understanding and reading of the player moves and try to counter them more efficiently, like the slim brigands throw knives when they have range to keep you at bay, plus even if the levels have more enemies and especially the latter one make it clear they’d really “Prefer” you were playing in local co-op, single player is more viable as if one of the character dies, you can continue with the other one, instead of just losing and having to redo the stage from scratch.
Plus there are more breakable elements or at least more surfaces to launch enemies against, alongside new level hazards like horse doing back kicks, and in general the levels are even better looking, offering more variety in background stuff and characters, which helps in making the levels feel more alive more than successions of fights, even if they’re still not interactable, like wagons with people being blocked in “traffic”, cows grazings, or the stinky Roman encampment you passed through the level before now visible in the distance, for example.
While presentation is better and gameplay is improved… the enemy variety isn’t improved enough to avoid the usual feeling of repetition, and remember the bonus games, the barrell destruction mini-games. The button mash racing levels?
Gone.
Yeah, they weren’t good but they were an attempt at providing some variety to the gameplay, to break up the usual action, which the first one already needed badly, as i lamented before, so already a bad move to just get rid of them and substitute them for nothing, so the repetition can be even more fierce and kick in faster, all made worse by a game that also way shorter than the first one, it’s not even half as long, taking about 2/3 hours to finish the campaign (opposed to the 7 hours of the first one) and with somehow even less unlockables, since the game let’s you select any of the unlocked level to play, so there’s no free play to unlock since it’s already “baked in” this time.
So two steps forward, one backwards… but actually way more than one.
This was the occasion to make a more proper game of this kind, add moves to the characters repertoire, to iron out the flaws and improve the weaker bits, but instead it a barely improved foundation that too feels unfinished as the first game, arguably even more since the many issues that remained unaddressed and stick out as insulting, considering how it recycles basically wholesale 90 % of the first game in terms of enemy roster and overall assets.
Some are just weird choices to nitpick at, like how, despite the levels being more to the pointed and less long thrice as needed for the sake of padding, there’s a lot of just… walking about.
Not even exploration, just some relatively long stretches of walking about, destroying some rocks, taking in the admittedly great looking hand drawn background and sprites, which is weird and pointless for a title evoking the old 2D beat em ups where something was always blowing up, or popping up from somewhere to fight you, with a pacing meant to always keep you engaged.
while it’s more playable solo (while the design still unsubtly lets you know you’re supposed to be playing co-op as default), maybe removing the stamina system was a bad ideas as even bosses are more easily exploited, hilariously sometimes you’ll be able to clock them and will have to spent 2 minutes still clearing out the mooks, because they never get the picture.
I’m not if just me used to abuse the system from playing and finishing the first game, but even solo is easier, less frustrating but also even more exploitable due to the enemy IA not being tuned up, they just have better understanding of how to attack you or keep you at bay, but just a smidge, and eventually the cheapest tactics will prevail like thy did in the first game, even more needed since there’s really no brief after-hit invincibility, i don’t remember if the first had the same issue but here it becomes noticeable because you have better crowd control and stunlocking is the only way for enemies to actually deal some damage.
Wish i would either have a dodge manouver for that, or a better, more responsive block.
Again, like for the first Slap Em All, there’s really no reason for this game to have a scoring system since there are no leaderboards, no intricate or elaborate scoring system that ranks your playstile or has stuff to reward you with.
As i said before, it’s really that, 2/3 hours and you’re done, albeit getting a gold icon for beating the levels on Hard, and there are trophies but even those are less since there are no mini-games or bonus rounds this time around, no collectables to revisit the levels for.
Not that you’d want to replay this anyways, the game doesn’t really do anything to encourage or motivate such a behaviour, but you know, “back in the day” a game like this still would have bothered to have a survival horde mode, some multiplayer party minigames, maybe some challenge stages that reused assets to create new content…. something, ANYTHING, maybe some concept art fluff or music, maybe some promos of other games handled by the same publisher.
it being shorter, less challenging would be fine if they actually improved the gameplay, but aside some small improvement its just as unfinished… heck in prospective it’s even more unforgivably unfinished than the first one, there’s not even a final boss, a final confrontation against the actual villain, they made his sprite but couldn’t be arsed to make up a boss fight or didn’t have time to, so there’s no final boss fight.
Speaking of which, it’s even more obvious in some places how that they might have had plan for some variety levels, like there’s a river level where it begins with Asterix/Obelix automatically docking in a cutscene that implies they were drifting on a plank of wood down the river, and that might have been once an idea of a Turtles In Time style sort of hoverboard level variation, but most likely never got out of the conceptual phase instead of being axed content.
At least this time i haven’t had any glitches, but the game being prone to soft-freeze then resume reading the controller inputs could be either the game or my PS4, i’m not sure.
You know what Microids, don’t even bother with a Slap Em All 3, if are gonna keep making your studios shit out unfinished subpar shit like this, which breaks my heart since i do love the series, and i will once again say it does deserve better. Better than this, anyway.
Don’t bother unless you’re a really BIG Asterix & Obelix fan or you got this in a bundle (or on Game Pass or subscription) for very few bucks, especially if you played the fist Slap Them All and hoped this would be the perfect occasion for the studio and Microids to release a proper good Asterix & Obelix retro styled beat em up, that this would be what the first one wasn’t due to time or budget restraints or whatever reason.
Hugely disappointing bungum, especially insulting for a 40 bucks priced sequel, as well, this is stuff that back in the day perfectly justified renting games instead of buying them, i’m sorry, it is.
Know what, i’m gonna go play the old Konami arcade Asterix & Obelix game, it is bound to be better.
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