Game #1130: Beowulf - The Game

 A poem best left unfinished. 

 I like Beowulf, the poem even though I had the displeasure of being introduced to it through the Adam Lambert movie. I never watched the CG movie starring Angelina Jolie as the Grendel's mother, however, I've been aching for some hack and slash action and since I haven't come across Viking: Battle for Asgard I decided that Beowulf: The Game would have to do. I regret my life choice. 

 Since the movie is rather uneventful for a full-blown action game, this game is made up of a lot of fat, taking over after Beowulf defeats Grendel's mother(Or does he?) and becoming king. The narrative is a mess, sometimes I had a hard time following the story the game had to tell, and it's so poorly told and it's so uninteresting that I didn't even care. Just go out and fight people because I don't know. It's not like the original Beowulf battled humans, so some liberties were taken.

 Gameplay takes the form of a very linear 3-D beat'em up. You play as Beowulf himself are you are joined by up to 12 Thanes that will attack anything in sight. Your lifebar is a bit weird, because you actually recover health by defeating enemies. If your health is high enough you can spend a bit to power up your warriors, which would be "good/heroic" actions, or you can spend your own health to enter Carnal mode, which would be 'bad/carnal' actions that buff you for a short while, but your attacks will hurt even your Thanes.

 Gameplay is anything but satisfying, the dodge/roll is kinda clunky and weapons break all the time, so you have to search for more. Fallen enemies don't drop their weapon, you actually have to press Circle, the mash it to grab them, then mash X to steal their weapon. But they last 2-3 hits before breaking. Weapons you find in racks require you to mash the O button too, but they last a bit more. You can unlock Celestial/Shadow weapons if you find them, and then you can equip them on any savespot, but these too will eventually break. Speaking of mashing, you have to mash to perform most stuff, which is tiring, and bosses usually require QTEs that are very repetitive and get lengthened on every cycle.

 Sometimes you have to order your thanes to do something, which takes a while... or you have to perform a dumb rhythm minigame to speed them up. If you miss an input they will fumble and the progress will halt for a few seconds, which was annoying. I feel like there was some input lag. Oh, and some chapters are made up entirely of this minigame, which were incredibly boring. Heck, to wake up the Grendel the characters decide to.... sing really loud. Yeah.... it's pretty dumb.

 I didn't finish the game. I got to the 'protect the holy symbol' mission, which seems to be a stopping point for many. The game ranges from boring to downright annoying with all the button mashing you have to do, so I decided I simply didn't care enough to see it to its conclusion. I know movie-licensed games used to be pretty bad, but Ubisoft should've been ashamed to publish garbage like this.

 3.0