There is no need to elaborate on how much people in our small country (plus Germany and Italy) love Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. Unfortunately, the former has been gone for seven years, but Terence Hill is still alive and well, and we wish him good health. Not a day goes by without running into the evergreen adventures of Charlie and Alan, Kirby and Walsh, Greg and Eliot (alias Bastiano and Antonio) or even Rosco and Doug (alias Steinberg and Mason) on some TV channel.
And sure enough, a few years ago a team of Italian game developers, who are probably just as much fans of the duo as we are, realized that no video game had ever covered their adventures. They changed that, and Bud Spencer & Terence Hill: Slaps and Beans was born, a pixel art beat’em up full of references, jokes and, of course, nostalgia. It’s been six years, so it was time to prepare the sequel. And Slaps and Beans 2 puts us back on the nostalgia train, which takes us on the same exciting journey as last time, only a little louder.
Slaps and Beans 2 stars – drum roll – Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. Of course, that’s not their name, but that doesn’t matter. Our adventures begin on a raft, where the cinematic allusion starts in the very first minutes with one or two well-placed references. Our heroes soon land on a tropical island whose number one export is bananas, but the local underworld has got their hands on it, much to the chagrin of the locals. But there’s no reason to worry, because slaps have arrived with our heroes. After the first few dozen bad faces have been dealt with, the game soon shows that this time we will not only go and slap each other, but sometimes funny mini-games will also await us.
But of course, the backbone of the gameplay is the slaps, since it’s a beat’em up. Playing alone, you can switch between Bud and Terence with the press of a button, but the real fun is obviously a joint game – preferably with another big fan. The two characters have different attacks, but there is no difference in control. As in the first part, Bud is the strength and Terence is the agility. Every blow and slap of the former is devastating, while the latter easily takes advantage of the opportunities provided by the environment. At the same time, due to the same control (small hit, big hit, save, special hit or throw) in the game experience, it’s really the same, we play with any of them.
Our opponents all come from the movies, most of them are easily recognizable (especially the better-known actors like Vittorio Borgese or Riccardo Pizzuti). There are not many differences in their behavior, since they work like Bud and Terence: most of them are snarky, easy-to-put-down opponents, and sometimes one or two bigger ones appear. The latter are not harder to slap down than the others, but they can hit hard enough to be annoying.
The whole game doesn’t show much real innovation compared to its predecessor, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The gameplay mostly works well, sometimes the controls are a bit difficult, but otherwise it’s easy to learn. At the same time, the mini-games add a lot to the experience, and the creators paid a lot of attention to this. There is an eating contest, boat balancing, obstacle course and even pelota. These can be played not only in story mode, but also through a separate menu. By the way, the biggest innovation of the game is that this time our heroes and the others also speak. When the first game was made, dubbing didn’t quite fit into the studio’s budget, but now it does. Unfortunately, however – for understandable reasons – we have to give up the Hungarian dubbing, but there are also English, German and Italian dubbing. Perhaps the latter is the most authentic.
As for the visuals, in principle it has become more beautiful compared to the first part, but if we don’t put the two games next to each other, we will hardly notice it. At the same time, there is absolutely nothing wrong with its simple pixel art graphics. Also, this is not entirely true. The visuals themselves are perfectly fine, the whole design is very atmospheric. However, the game tends to spoil this with very spectacular graphical bugs. Bugs happen quite often anyway, characters get stuck and the like. But these can be easily improved, I think the makers will.
Slaps and Beans 2 doesn’t want to reform the gaming industry, stand out from the crowd, or become famous or infamous. He just wants to entertain, especially Bud Spencer and Terence Hill fans. And it’s perfect for that. Either alone or together with friends (the mini-games can be played with up to four people), it’s great fun to get back into the shoes of our heroes for a bit.
The test copy was provided by the game publisher.