Monday, June 19, 2023

BUD SPENCER & TERENCE HILL - SLAPS AND BEANS (PS4)

 

One of my guilty pleasures are Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movies. Particularly Watch out, we´re mad! and the Trinity ones (I wonder if they would work with today's audiences). They are part of my childhood, and I will always have a little corner of my heart for them

Some years ago a small Italian dev team ran a kickstarter to buy the IP rights to make this game, and eventually released this Beat’em up. I liked the idea and if I would´ve known of the campaign I would´ve certainly contributed. However, I´m not a fan of that genre and full price didn´t help either. But recently I learned it was on an 80% discount, and I thought “it is time”

So last week I finished the game. It´s not long, probably 3 hours if you´re skilled in that type of games (it took a bit more than 4h to me). For the most part, it is a good game: The spirit of those movies is well-reflected, they re-use a lot of scenarios and character types from them, and a beat’em up is the logical genre choice. The 8 bit visuals also fit well in a nostalgia product such as this, and the actors’ trademark fighting styles are replicated into the player actions nicely - most punching animations are taken directly from the movies. Even the music soundtrack is made by the same composers!

On the minus side it´s not a particularly refined / complex game. Combat options are the same from beginning to end, most enemies are cloned archetypes across all levels, and although minigames pepper the playthrough, it feels a bit repetitive overall

Still, the game achieves its goal of transporting you to the physical comedy/optimistic mood/good guys vs bad guys/just have fun spirit of those 70s movies. Since there is a sequel coming on, it sounds like I´m not the only one who thinks that way :D

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