Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! 2 PS4 [REVIEW] | Fist Of The Roman Star: Ceasar’s Rage 2

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.

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Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! PS4 [REVIEW] | Rock Em & Sock Em Romans

Because i’m slowly turning April into the “Asterix & Obelix” month, and due to a new CGI animated film, Asterix & Obelix: The Kingdom Of Nubia, releasing this October, we’re doing more of the Microids published Asterix titles.

Since we did all the titles in the XXL subseries of Asterix & Obelix games, we’re now tackling a retro styled 2D beat em up, the fittingly titled Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All!

The story is based on 5 classic Asterix & Obelix stories, plus an original final act, so if you were hoping for an original story, you aren’t getting that here, but the picks are indeed some of the more recognizable and beloved stories from the comic book series, like Asterix and The Normans, Asterix In Spain and Asterix & Cleopatra.

The game is fuckin gorgeous, to the point i believe they blew their entire budget on the hand-drawn style graphics, as the cutscenes are just cheap character sprites/portraits talking at each other while the portraits just fade in an out, and while the art style it’s loyal to the comic strips, it means there also some sadly fitting “ethnic stereotypes” brought over as is from the decade olds comics, like the poor black guy that is the sightseeing dude on the pirate ship and is routinely knocked over when Asterix & Obelix casually terrorize them when traveling, or the random “asian pirate with nunchuks” mid-tier enemies that might as well have “Mickey Rooney doing yellowface” masks on.

Speaking of the cutscenes, at least they voiced these, can’t say the same for Asterix & Obelix XXXL: The Ram From Hibernia… but in similar fashion to that they cheaped out and didn’t bother to dub it in italian as well, despite the franchise being really popular here still.

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Asterix & Obelix XXL 3: The Crystal Menhir PS4 [REVIEW] | XXS-ix

One might wonder why i’m not reviewing this one as a Platformation Time Again subject.

That is because, confusingly, the third entry in this series of platforming-action games… isn’t a platformer at all.

Yeah, took me by surprise because why wouldn’t it be, especially now with the retro 3D platformer revival going on to this day?

Regardless, this is the third entry in the series, meaning its a brand new game developed by Osome Studio, makes sense as they handled the remasters/ports of the first two games that launched on PS2 20+ years ago, as Microids is definitely seeing a lot more return in using the Asterix & Obelix license than others, like their Marsupilami game (remember that? I kinda do and kinda not), not really a surprise, since the Uderzo & Goscinny created comic book series has been popular for decades in Europe, France obviously, but others including Italy as well.

But we’ve discussed this before, so let’s get to the plot.

The plot is also untied to the previous XXL games…. or is it?

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