Brawlers are a unique genre. There’s not much else that can feel as equally welcoming and unforgiving as them. It’s a type of game that benefits from pushing the envelope, taking a simple concept, and stretching just how far it can go. With a good brawler, generally, the experience should feel intentionally effortless, despite the player putting all the effort they have into winning. It should feel like we’re empowered to beat down waves of perfectly placed goons.

Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All!, the latest installment in the long-running mixed-media series, finds itself on strange footing. Maybe it’s fitting given characters that have lived for so many years, in so many different forms, to be disconnected from exactly what a gaming experience needs to provide at this moment in time. Maybe the most disappointing thing is that for everything the pair has been, there are a lot of things they’re not in this latest installment.

Now, this game is positively charming from the initial get-go. The writing and characters are fun and welcome, which is pretty unaccounted for in the brawler genre, with well-animated (albeit, showing limited budget) cutscenes between the dual protagonists. This carries over incredibly well into the gameplay from the first screen.

The minute-by-minute gameplay just looks and feels really good, pure and simple. The moves hit hard, the animations look great, and it really makes you feel powerful. With throw moves that will clear an entire screen, dash attacks that crumple shields, and more, it’s a blast even if there’s not a lot of complex combos to grow into.

At some point, though, something should happen to most anyone who plays. The realization will sink in. Maybe it comes when thinking about how great the characters sprites look, before just then realizing it’s in service of walking through a cardboard, static plane of existence. Maybe it’ll be at the point of progressing to the umpteenth screen of the same style of Roman soldier enemies, in the same exact attack pattern as the previous 6 screens.

A seeming laziness defines and permeates this game, which is more disappointing than a death blow to its innate quality. Now, yes, most brawlers are very simple by design. What really separates the great brawlers from the mediocre ones are the level and enemy designs. Take The Simpsons arcade game: if you’ve ever played it, you’d be hard-pressed to not have a memory of at least one easily identifiable component about it. On the other end, there is absolutely no way whatsoever that any component of this game stands out in that way, besides any that can be tied to these characters’ established identities.

As you work through a myriad of copy-and-pasted levels and enemies, it can’t help but devolve into blank nothingness. And that’s such a huge shame. With such solid fight animations, personality in its moves, and a real sense of impact and hit detection, there’s nothing to put them to. It’s unsurprising then that by the second act (not that deep into the game), you’re already repeating a boss battle from the first.

So, where else do these limitations reach? Pretty much every other gameplay component that isn’t notably good. Brawlers are built on replay value, and this one has little. If you’re ever interested in another run-through, you might as well just replay the first few levels over and over again. At the default difficulty, you will rarely die, if ever, so it’s not like you’d miss much. Even the secret areas are not so much secret areas as places you have to walk a little further to get to. Oh, and the sound: it’s so repetitive that I had to mute it and save myself from the repeated attack and enemy response cues.

While I didn’t check out the co-op, I don’t see how it could help much, and how it wouldn’t just serve as a way to double down on the tedium. As I waited for something new to do, it was clear the game wasn’t going to stray. For every “unique” experience, e.g., bulls or chariots charging across the screen, a foot race, etc, it felt like a checklist of bare-minimum requirements being completed.

It’s truly a shame when a game offers strong gameplay but cannot back it up in most any other needed aspect. In many ways, it’s the worst type of game to recommend. Something that’s neither remarkably bad but admirably swings for the fences, or something purely good. Resting somewhere in the middle ground, there’s the skeleton of something here that could be unearthed and repurposed for a much better sequel. Until then, there’s a myriad of other Switch-specific brawlers to be had, offering a better experience, even if there’s charm and polish.

A Switch review copy of Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All! was provided by Microids for this review.

Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All!

$29.99

5

Score

5.0/10

Pros

• Fun, solid gameplay
• Great visuals
• Charming style

Cons

• Gets old Quick
• Repetitive Visuals and Gameplay
• Uninspired