Ever since playing the original Assassin’s Creed, I have become a little obsessed with the Templars and their order – reading books of fiction and watching documentaries on the History Channel. I love the whole idea of the Crusades and this Holy order, so when The Cursed Crusade flew threw my letterbox I was trembling with anticipation. Yet could this game’s title be a little more apt than most…

The Cursed Crusade is set at the end of the 12^th Century; King Richard has lost the Third Crusade, his army sent back from Jerusalem licking their wounds. Even with the defeat though, the new Pope is determined to invade the Holy Land and sets about constructing a new army for the Fourth Crusade. Enter our two heroes; Denz de Bayle, a young man looking for redemption after his father failed to return from the last Crusade, and Esteban Noviembre, a simple thief from Spain, a thief with morale’s who soon becomes indebted to Denz for saving his life. From that point on they share the same journey; both burdened with the same curse – the curse of the Templars. Does this sound interesting? You still there? Excellent, for the curse is quite the fun part. When activated the curse allows the pair to see the world turn to Hell, granting them extra speed and strength against their enemies. You have a gauge which slowly depletes when in the curse vision, but beware for Death is lurking in the corner, waiting to claim your soul!

… and then the real curse kicks in, you begin playing the game! The game is made up of missions, where you basically kick some medieval ass with big swords, maces, spears and axes. Swordplay plays quite the big part, with enemies charging at you as you fight to the end of the level. These so called missions can be quite short – think of a 3D streets of rage but with more blood and violence. Yes this game has a lot of blood, with some killer finishing moves, but in-between all of this glorious fighting we have some quick time events – you know the ones, press the controller buttons when displayed on the screen. The combat itself isn’t that sophisticated; you tap the X and Y buttons for attacks, press the right trigger to block. You can also perform a block break by pressing the B button. Sounds quite cool, alas I just ended up button mashing for the most part. This gets a little tedious after a little while, with boredom quickly setting in. Oh and did I mention the lengthy cut scenes….

Yes cut scenes galore feature within the game, in fact to paint you a picture, let’s go for the first mission – the prologue. Ten minutes of cut scene action, where (and, I’m sorry) this really bugged me as I sat there waiting to jump in and slash some bad guys! Nope, that isn’t going to happen though, for the cut scenes make up the entire first mission!  You don’t actually get to do any fighting until the second mission… this I found a little bizarre and odd. I like the idea of setting up a story but using a whole mission as the intro?

Visually I hate to say this, but there’s nothing really outstanding – the graphics are adequate for their purpose, but you have the sense that this would run quite happily on a PS2. Then there’s the collision detection, which at times is quite atrocious; enemy’s feet appearing in other enemy bodies, paths blocked with barrels, simply walk through them and see them merge into you and then reappear at the side of you. Bugs seem to be apparent throughout the game, even the quick time events at times feel like you need to bash the hell out of the pad to work properly. There never seems to be a clear cohesion of parts to the game. Some work well, whilst others seem shoddily stuck together with super glue. The story acts out like a low budget B film with lip synching to cringe at.

The biggest bug for me to bear in the game though is the sound. You see for some insane reason, which I only found after an hour thinking my Xbox was going funny – imagine my panic stricken face – the sounds after every game reverts back to zero! Yes after a game, you restart the game with no sound. Hopefully this will be fixed in an update, but I have never found myself panicking so much during a review.

The Cursed Crusade is fun for a time, but soon the bugs and little glitches begin to irritate no end. Add to this the fairly basic combat and simple structure of the missions, and The Cursed Crusade becomes quite literally a curse in itself. Shame though, as the premise did indeed have quite a bit of promise…

Title: The Cursed Crusade
Developer: Kylotonn Games
Publisher: Atlus/dtp entertainment AG
Genres: Action Adventure
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Release Date: October 11th 2011

Pros -

Good premise
Combat can be fun for a little while

Cons - 

Bugs galore
Cute scene heavy
Becomes repetitive after a while

OneArmedCookie

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