The Asterix and Obelix Bande dessinée were a quintessential part of my childhood. The escapades of the indomitable Gauls and their tiny village engendered in the young version of me a lifelong love for history and for comic books. I was excited then, to play Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All! 2. After all, graphically it looks gorgeous; like Asterix at the Olympic Games – my favourite Asterix adventure – but brought to animated interactive video game life. I should have known though, never judge a game by its looks. Unfortunately, Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All! 2 is an absolute boresome chore to play.
Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All! 2 is a scrolling 2D beat ‘em up, which should be a fantastic fit for the Roman bashing duo. And it is, for about five minutes. You and a friend can smash through columns of legionaries, sending the hapless soldiers flying in your wake. Quite literally flying, as punching Legionnaires out of their sandals proves one of the few highlights of the game. Frustratingly, however, that initially fun five minutes is repeated, ad nauseam and unchanged, for the remainder of the game.
Now, I’m aware this is a criticism that can be levelled at the strolling duff ‘em up genre in general, but at least recent examples have had the good grace to vary up the formula; to add alternate routes, high scores to chase, and new moves and characters to unlock. Slap Them All 2 doesn’t bother with any of that fun stuff. Nor does it bother giving its two playable characters many attack moves to unleash in the first place. A basic punch combo, a grapple, a throw, and a special or two, are all there is on offer. Curiously, there is even a disparity in the move set between Asterix and Obelix, with the poor sap lumbered with playing the diminutive warrior missing out on any grapple attacks.
Gameplay, as a result of the lack of variation, soon becomes empty, tedious, and repetitive. Matters are not helped by the infinitesimal roster of enemy types available to punch – many of which are cheekily borrowed wholesale from the first game. Over the two-hour run time, you’ll face the same Romans and Barbarians, with the same handful of attack patterns, again and again. Environments are bland, with an inexplicably hefty amount of walking between combat encounters. Why the developers thought people play scrolling beat ‘em ups to walk a lot with nothing else going on is beyond me.
There’s also a sense that Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All! 2 is missing a lot of content. Take high scores by way of an example. Everything you do in a level, from knocking out Gladiators to collecting food, adds to your combo meter and thus to your end-of-level score. The game will gleefully inform you that a new high score has been set each time you finish a stage. So far so what, right? The odd thing comes with the realisation that there are no leaderboards – online or otherwise – to compete with. Point collecting and score chasing, so vital to the genre, is completely absent. There is no reason for this game to even have a scoring system, yet it is still present. The result is the feeling that a huge chunk of the game has been left on the cutting room floor. Quite frankly, with the lacklustre experience that’s left, the rest of it should have been left on the cutting room floor too.