They may not have made a huge splash in the United States, but just about anyone in Europe has seen plenty of movies starring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, masters of the so-called “spaghetti western” genre, with their irony and loud slaps making for memorable and timeless action. A passionate group of Italian indie developers already made a lovely game inspired by their adventures, but there’s even more of that in this sequel. Let’s see how this one fares, shall we?
Mad friends
For those who have never heard of these Italian actors with suspiciously international names, a little history recap. Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, whose real names are respectively Carlo Pedersoli and Mario Girotti, are two Italian actors who decided to take up these American-sounding names to help their prospects abroad, and as a duo they’ve made over a dozen movies together between the 1960’s and 1980’s. The vast majority of these have been ironic action movies: more famously known for their “spaghetti western” roles, but also starring in buddy cop flicks, stories set on tropical islands and more. The roles are simple, with Bud being the grumpy puncher, and Terence serving as the charming but frail companion – both of them can throw punches and outsmart the bad guys in all them adventures, with the banter between them almost as iconic as the fights, which feature comically loud sounds of punches, slaps, with actors flying left and right as our heroes smash them in a very family-friendly way, surprisingly enough. Their movies are still fun and enjoyable to this day, and I absolute recommend checking out at least a movie or two by them if you never did before.
Bud Spencer & Terence Hill: Slaps And Beans was born as an unauthorized demo back in 2015, growing into a promising Kickstarter and then a very fun full-fledged pixel art indie game a couple years later. With the likenesses of both actors conceded by the rightholders (Carlo Pedersoli has unfortunately died back in 2016) and with a vast selection of original music from the very movies they were inspired by, Italian developer Trinity Team has created a 2D beat ’em up, with a story that takes Bud and Terence into a brand new story but in familiar venues, taking visual and gameplay cues from the western flicks, the cop movies and more. It was a highly enjoyable game for fans of the duo, and while the gameplay could have been a bit more varied, the combat was fun enough to entertain in the couple hours that the game lasts, especially playing in 2-player local co-op with a friend. There even were some hilarious minigames mimicking famous movie scenes of theirs in there too, such as the iconic dune buggy race from the movie “Watch Out, We’re Mad”. Some of the main criticisms towards the game were a low variety and the perhaps too simplicistic combat. Thus, when this sequel was announced, it was easy to get excited: fixing these issues could really elevate Slaps & Beans into one of the strongest beat ’em up titles out there, and not just for fans of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.
Two isn’t always better than one
Unfortunately, that is not really the case, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. On a surface level, Slaps And Beans 2 isn’t vastly different from its predecessor: it features the same basic combat loop, with either character having two basic attacks, a stamina bar to use special attacks and a handful of contextual skills, just with the addition of a few so-called “superpower” power-ups, which have very little impact on the game actually as they only end up boosting speed, health or damage for a brief timeframe. But whereas the first game navigated players through fairly long and varied levels, many of the sequel’s levels boil down to 2 or 3 big areas, where the players are just overwhelmed by combat scenarios where several dozens of enemies will arrive in waves, sticking them in one spot for a good 5-10 minutes before a funny cutscene moves them to the next. The sheer size of some of these areas even brought the developers to zoom out the camera by a lot, making it harder to make out the action and making the levels’ nice pixel art not stand out so much anymore. There still are levels with exploration segments, small puzzles and whatnot, but the entire ordeal doesn’t feel as strongly designed and carefully connected as it did before.
In general, the polish of the game feels less optimal too. Sure, it has to be said that I played the first game on Xbox, where it arrived years after its PC release, thus with plenty of bugs getting fixed and features getting optimized better. However, for such a direct sequel, I’ve found a surprisingly large amount of woes – multiple crashes, many questionable hitboxes, rather long loading times even when moving from one menu to another, and even many bizarrely convoluted game mechanics, especially in the minigames. See, this sequel has many more minigames compared to the first game, and while on paper they should be pretty nice, their polish doesn’t quite live up to the standards I’d expect by the developers. The rules are shown at first but they are often incomplete, and with no videos showing what to actually do or practice time akin to Mario Party, players will just hop into these sometime not quite precise and not really well explained minigames, likely failing a couple times by sheer confusion. Similarly, boss fights have been extended to multi-stage affairs with lengthy sequences that have to be sold in a specific manner, but often this is quite convoluted and poorly explained as well, throwing in some extra trial and error into the mix.
Slap it together
Of course, the core gameplay and visuals remained the same, thus it’s still an enjoyable game – it is therefore bit of a shame that some of the innovations and changing they tried bringing to the formula are rather disappointing. Not all of them, however. For one, this time the game has a full-blown dub in multiple languages of not only the protagonists but also all the side characters. While the delivery could be slightly better at times and there’s a few errors I noticed in the subtitle, the combination of original music and voices that sound similar to those we’d hear in these classic movies make for a nostalgic audio treat. And speaking of the music, the game has an even more expended selection of officially licensed tracks and songs inspired by the movies, with even an interactive Jukebox that can be used in the menu to listen to all these bangers whenever we want.
Completing the main story in any of the 3 available difficulties is once again a 3-4 hour affair, but the game doesn’t quite end there. If you loved the minigames from the campaign, these can also be played in local co-op up to a combination of 4 human or AI players, either picking specific activities yourself or letting it assign us a random one with combined scores across all of them at the end to declare a winner. As said, these minigames range from decent to poor, with a handful of convoluted rules, unoptimal controls, unreliable hitboxes and so on hampering the experience. It certainly ain’t no Mario Party and it won’t be a mainstay in evenings with your friends, but it can be a decent way to pass the time for an hour or two, adding a bit more meat to the package.
Bud Spencer & Terence Hill - Slaps and Beans 2
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- The humor is on point
- Slapping enemies around never gets old
- Great soundtrack and full dub as well
- Absolutely made for co-op but very fun alone as well
CONS
- Virtually unchanged gameplay from the first game
- Most additions are not on par with the previous game
- Big arena fights and lengthy bosses get really tedious
- Not as polished as the first game
