Astérix: These Romans Are Crazy! – Hardcore Gaming 101

This entry is part 28 of 28 in the series Asterix

Due to the financial difficulties that Atari has been experiencing for near a decade, the Astérix license was forced to find itself a new home by late 2008 as it simply was not deemed profitable enough. The search was a rather quiet one that went unnoticed, but maybe not surprisingly it would find a new home very near to its old one. In 2009, Ubisoft announced they would develop a new Astérix title for the Nintendo DS, at that point called Adventures of Astérix. When released a few months after the initial announcement, it was re titled Astérix: Ils sont fous, ces Romains (Astérix: These Romans Are Crazy!).

As exciting as it is seeing a new company have their hands on him, Astérix’s new adventure is not exactly very daring. Astérix” Ils sont fous, ces Romains is yet another board game. Obélix has become bored in his spare time. The Romans have given up on trying to defeat the village, and even the wild boars have gone into hiding, fearing they will stumble upon the oaf wandering the woods. To help lift his spirits, Astérix has organized a surprise for him: a race around the Roman Empire. The rules are simple – first man to reach the goal has won. Along the way there are challenges to be met,and Romans patrolling to be found so there’s still lots of fun left to be had within the Empire. Joining the duo in their race is Abraracourcix and Assurancetourix.

The game is basically a mini-game collection of the laziest sort. There are a few different kind of spaces to land on, some being mini games, some being hazards and others being beneficial. There are a total of four boards to play on – the village, the forest, the Roman camp and the coast line. Each of these boards have five mini games each, ranging from catching musical notes as Assurancetourix to cooking feasts at the banquet. The mini games are usually extremely simple with the only requirement being to drag something left and right or memorize some kind of order to objects. Before these mini games you get the choice of either “Standard” or “Expert”, though the difficulty hardly goes up whatsoever when you pick Expert. Along the way you can also acquire a wild boar which lets you skip events and progress one extra space. Each board usually takes about ten minutes to finish.

The sprites are again scaled artwork, though this time they seem awfully cut and paste, with white edges around the sprites and weird looking motion. The top screen usually shows some kind of artwork taken straight from the books or different images pasted together to create some kind of relevancy to the mini game. The art certainly isn’t bad looking, but it feels like a Flash game, using pre existing material rather than the all new DS adventure that was promised in Ubisoft’s announcement.

Being released to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Astérix, it couldn’t be more fitting that the game feels old, clumsy and lazy. Apart from some artwork and the novelty of being an anniversary product, it’s completely forgettable. It does allow for single cart multiplayer should you find another old bored buddy to race you.

Series Navigation<< Astérix & Obélix Encounter CleopatraAstérix: Rescue Obélix / Astérix and the Vikings / Astérix and Cleopatra >>