More than ever motivated by the idea of making his metamorphosis (Goldorak, go!) And changing his image with the players, Microids is busy behind the scenes so that the release of Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All! is done in the best possible conditions. Until now, the 2D beat’em all has been relatively quiet, despite an announcement that made a lot of noise, but it was without counting on our motivation to want to discover the game as soon as possible. After months of hard work, and eight weeks before the release of Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All !, Microids has finally agreed to let us enter their premises to discover the game. The icing on the cake, we were accompanied by its producer, Julien “Julo” Hubert, whom we all knew when he was Editor-in-Chief of Gameblog. And thanks to him, we know a lot more about this Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All!
Age advances and our memory sometimes plays tricks on us, but if there is one thing that we have not forgotten, it is the announcement of Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All. On March 24, 2021, it is around 5:30 p.m. when Microids reveals the existence of Asterix & Obelix: Baffez-les Tous, a 2D beat’em all developed by the studio Mr Nutz, the creators of Mr Nutz on Super Nintendo. sure, but also the most recent Toki, released on Nintendo Switch in December 2018. It will not be long before Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All is the subject of a certain hype, recalling good memories arcade games that we could do when we were younger in the local cafe. It was in the 90s, some of you weren’t born yet, and at that time Konami was arguably one of the most prestigious publishers in the world. Since then, things have changed, video games have evolved, Konami is struggling to exist today and certain genres have gone out of fashion.
A flagship of video games in the past, beat’em all has seen its hegemony decline over the new generations of consoles, preferring new genres, more open but also more modern. The legacy of the arcade video game being a relic of the past, difficult to bet on a genre that the young audience has hardly known. But as everyone knows, the power of nostalgia should never be underestimated, especially when the children of yesteryear are the adults of today, and who now have almost unlimited purchasing power. Publishers now know it and some studios actually have their hobbyhorse today. We think in particular of DotEmu, a young French company that revives many old licenses from the past to bring them up to date. Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, Windjammers 2 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenage to come and finally Streets of Rage 4 which recorded more than 2.5 million sales (figures stopped in April 2021), you might as well say that the sector is rather lucrative ; to such an extent that DotEmu has just been bought by Focus Entertainment for the tidy sum of 38.5 million euros. At Cyrille Imbert, we brought out cigars, champagne and cotillion, believe me.
THE BAFFE IS VISUAL!
In parallel with this, Microids has also launched a similar project: to revive the Asterix & Obelix license that it holds, but under the prism of old-fashioned beat’em all, obviously reminiscent of Konami’s game in the 90’s. To implement the project, the French company called on Mr Nutz Studio, with Philippe Dessoly in the drawings and Pierre Adane in the programming, joined a few months later by Julien Hubert, who became a producer at Microids. Together, they will work to make Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All their spearhead of their end-of-year catalog in 2021. It only takes a few seconds from the start of the game to see that Microids and Mr Nutz Studio have undoubtedly just given birth to the most beautiful 2D beat’em all produced to date. You will probably tell yourself that we are doing tons of it, but honestly, the title is amazingly beautiful, so much so that it was hard to believe it. The character sprites are huge, the sets are teeming with detail and the animations are flexible enough to see. We clearly have the feeling of having the comic strip coming to life before our eyes, and it is this desire to want to do everything by hand that makes the difference. Because yes, the whole game was made with artisanal methods, almost ancestral we will say, and which allows this Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All to release such a special aura. The work is so fine that even Philippe Dessoly’s pencil stroke does not betray the artistic direction given by Albert Uderzo, who died last year.
FOR YOUNG AND OLD
On the gameplay side, Microids and Mr Nutz Studio have opted for a gameplay that adapts to all types of players, implying that it will be a game for the general public. So yes, we can already hear the purists raging at the back of the room and telling us that Streets of Rage 4 offered ultra technical gameplay, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the Asterix & Obelix license is above all a family game. It is therefore impossible for Julo and the team of Mr Nutz Studio to complicate the gameplay to death, under penalty of damaging the experience. But beware, the general public does not mean that the gameplay is devoid of interest; the developers having taken care to integrate not unpleasant subtleties. Before going into the details, you should know that Asterix & Obelix: Baffez-les Tous is playable in solo as well as in cooperation. That said, whether you play it alone or with a friend passing through the house (no online co-op, at least for the moment – you never know with an upcoming update), Asterix and Obelix works in tandem. This means that the two characters are linked from life to death in the game. Indeed, if one of the two falters on the battlefield, then game over is guaranteed. This choice of game design can be offensive at first, but it not only makes progress in the game a little more strategic, but also does not make progress too easy. Asterix must therefore watch over Obelix and vice versa. In solo, the approach is a bit different, in the sense that the player has the ability to switch characters by simply pressing the left trigger. It is therefore up to him to manage the two health bars, so as not to end up with an inopportune game over while he remained in life in the second partner.
THERE’S MUSÔ IN THE AIR
As for the gameplay mechanics, Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All takes the basics of Konami’s arcade game, with weak hits and stronger attacks that can obviously be combined to create a variety of combos. . Obviously, Microids and Mr Nutz Studio have brought their personal touch, as has this “run” function which allows the character to run (with this nifty animation that looks very comic) from one end of the screen to the other, in pressing twice in a given direction with the analog stick. Not only does this give a little more pep to the movements, but also offers this faculty to give a shoulder to the enemies. A bit like a ball hitting a bowling game. And it’s a pretty well thought out feature when you see that the game will not skimp on the number of enemies on the screen. Some people thought at the broadcast of the first screenshots that it was only a bluff, but it is very real, there is a significant amount of Roman soldiers on the screen, so much so that you have to know how to manage this flow almost migratory. This is where the subtlety in the gameplay comes into play, with this notion of knowing how to manage space and the arrival of enemies. The idea behind this desire to overwhelm the player is to create this feeling of satisfaction in defusing as many NPCs as possible, a bit like in a Musô (the Dynasty Warriors there). It is no coincidence that certain attacks, such as uppercut, can take down enemies in one hit and in clusters. Uppercut which however requires a certain sense of timing, so as not to facilitate the immediate access to this attack.
What is rather well seen, and it is quite normal, is that Asterix is different from Obelix, each with its own specificities. If Asterix walks faster and is more agile in the sequences, we notice that he has less amplitude in the blows and gives the impression of being a little more vulnerable; which is not the case in practice, the two characters being balanced at this level. In addition, if ever, it is played in cooperation, the developers have planned some little treats with duo free combos. For example, we can have fun catching an enemy, swinging him towards his partner so that he hits him on the fly. Again, it requires a certain sense of timing, and it helps to strengthen the a little more advanced side of the gameplay. We appreciate.
To make the adventure fun to play and sufficiently varied, Microids and Mr Nutz Studio have opted for an adaptation of several Asterix & Obelix comics. Of course, at this stage and to avoid divulging the story, Julien Hubert forbade himself to give us too many cookies. Just do we know thanks to the game session and a few characters crossed here and there that the chapter on the Normans will be treated. We also know that 5 comics were chosen to represent each chapter of the game, adapted for the needs of the videoludic adventure. Moreover, for those who are worried about the lifespan, Julo told us that Asterix & Obelix: Slap them All has no less than 50 levels! Although we did not have the pleasure of meeting them during our game session, end-of-level bosses are also planned, with some of the iconic characters from the comics. We will also be entitled to bonus courses, sweets as Julien Hubert likes to tell us, which are there to help the player breathe between two busy levels. During our exclusive preview, we were treated to a race between Asterix and Obelix on a beach. Like the Track & Fields of the time, you have to bludgeon the button to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. We can imagine other surprises of this taste and we only ask to discover them as soon as possible. In the meantime, this first hands-on was a real good surprise, and even if it is still too early to give a decision, it bodes well for Microids. It was time !
