Windows

Beowulf: The Game

Beowulf had een sfeervolle beat-em-up kunnen worden, maar kan door een povere afwerking niet lang boeien.

In this day and age, it shouldn't come as a surprise that a game based on a movie fares poorly, but for a character who has survived since 700 A.D., he deserves better treatment than this.

Beowulf is recommended for a rental. You can blast through the game on the lower difficulty in less than day. You will notice the title says: Beowulf: The Game. That's to distinguish it from the ancient manuscript. I tend to think of it as a disclaimer, or quite possibly a warning.

Развлечение на недельку для жаждущих рвать и метать. Только запаситесь современным одноядерным процессором и валерьянкой.

Blind, dead-end corridors dominate the level design, and the combat system feels clumsy and slow. Beowulf is one of the great epic heroes of literature; this sad chapter in his saga is best forgotten.

Should we be surprised that Beowulf is a disappointment? It's a movie licensed game after all, and we know what that means. I suppose we shouldn't. There is no video game development curse causing movie game tie-ins to be poor. It's just run-of-the-mill game design. Bar the occasionally impressive combat, Beowulf doesn't have enough to make it stand out.

Beowulf: The Game, for all its considerable flaws, has some unique and fun content. And even though your thanes aren't particularly capable, they're still oddly entertaining. So it's too bad that the fun is so short-lived, and that the game itself is so poorly crafted. After just three hours of Beowulf, you'll get stuck, have no idea what to do, and be ready to send it to sea on a pile of burning sticks. Even if you do struggle through the game's obtuse obstacles, the rest of its myriad problems will make you wish you'd spent your spoils on a longer, better voyage.

There are times when it's great to wade into battle and cut a bloody swath of destruction through your enemies as you try to save your people, but that kind of excitement lasts only for the first hour or so. Thanks to its ability to maul the movie that it supposedly follows, Beowulf is a poor substitute for the film and an even more frustrating experience on the console, given its clumsy fight mechanics, uninspired enemies and the repetitive button-mashing. In the end, Beowulf will leave you with an arsenal of broken weapons and a sore thumb by which to remember its legacy.

No obstante el número de alternativas en PC no es demasiado alto ya que este género abunda más en las consolas. Sin duda los juegos más parecidos son la trilogía de Prince of Persia, el variado Overlord y las adaptaciones de Onimusha 3 y Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, en este orden, ya que los dos juegos de Capcom también cuentan con ciertos aspectos mejorables.

Ubisoft Shanghai and Tiwak did a magnificent job of butchering the reimagining of a classic tale and providing plenty of disposable, derivative gameplay to go along with it. Though you'll eventually understand the new tale, the absurd storytelling often makes deciphering events and motivations as difficult as a non-scholar trying to read the Nowell Codex. As far as gameplay goes, I can understand why a development studio would want to mimic many of God of War's concepts, yet it's still surprising to see it done so badly. Things start out simple, and that's how they stay, right up until the very end. That is, of course, assuming you can bypass an unbelievably aggravating protection sequence where the utter uselessness of your Thanes, heroic, and carnal attacks becomes painfully obvious. What a waste of time.