Gather round, dear friends, and pull up a chair, as I tell a tale of brave men. Of templars and demons; of villains and heathens; and the son of a hero, named Denz.
Our tale begins with a battle, as the beer and the blood did a-flow. The Crusaders were ready for fighting, as they plundered and pillaged their foes. But their leaders were ruthless and crooked, with a prize they were yearning to own. What's that, you may ask? A strange artifact - and the power it's rumoured to hold.
And into this tale stepped two people, with paths long destined to cross. One yearning for riches aplenty, one seeking the truth of his loss. But there's one final twist not yet clear, as I draw to the end of my verse. What they couldn't expect, nor could honestly guess, is that two of them harboured the curse.
Ye olde power-uppe
As you may have guessed from the ditty little rhyme above, the Cursed Crusade is set during the time of the Templars and Crusades, in 13th Century Europe. Following the story of Denz De Bayle, the son of a Templar, who's trying to find out what happened to his father, long thought lost to the battlefields of Jerusalem, and Esteban Noviembre, a lying, cheating Spanish thief, the two men's lives become forever intertwined as they're recruited into the Crusades. What follows is a tale of mystery and intrigue, as it's revealed that the leaders of the Crusades, far from wanting to spread the good word, instead are seeking some mysterious artifacts, from the days of Christ. With the mysterious power each Artifact holds, the generals, the immensely named "Boniface" (sadly not pronounced Boney-face, no matter how much it should be), and De Flandre, seek to create a portal directly to Hell, unleashing its demons upon the unsuspecting world, and allowing them to take over.
As you may be able to tell, although it has a historical setting, the Cursed Crusade doesn't actually pay all that much attention to the real world. Bar turning two real life historical characters into ruthless pantomime baddies, and of course, featuring real world locations, for all intents and purposes, the game may as well be considered a fantasy. As a third person hack and slash adventure, The Cursed Crusade is heavily combat based, and you'll be hacking and slashing your way through each of the game's many levels, as you storm castles, defend cities, and generally engage in a bit of medieval warfare. It's lucky, then, that there are plenty of extra features to spice things up a little bit, and a fair amount of strategy involved if you want to survive. Playable in its entirety in co-op, it's entirely possible (and definitely best) for a friend to pick up a controller and join in the fun with you - and unlike other games, both players will earn achievements (on the 360), and can save their progress independently.
Different types of enemies you come up against will require different strategies to defeat them - some are heavily armoured, whilst others may carry a shield, or less. While you can just hammer X in front of most of the enemies until they eventually collapse, for others, you'll need to time your attacks well, waiting for them to show their weaknesses. For those who like remembering combinations of button presses, there's also hundreds of increasingly fancy combos on offer here, letting you go from basically poking someone with your sword, to flailing wildly like an angry Swedish chef dicing up some veg. With over 130 different weapons on offer, and plenty of different styles, from swords, to axes, to maces and hulking double-handed swords, it's always worth picking up any weapons you find lying around, as you may find yourself unlocking a different fighting style, which in turn unlocks a whole host of new combos for you to try out. Or, if you're the impatient type, you can just press B and smack them in the face with the butt of your sword, sending them staggering, and creating a valuable opening.
Ye olde bonke on the head.
But with all the bashing you'll be doing of swords against shields and armour, your weapons are bound to take a beating - and, in an odd twist, in the Cursed Crusade they can actually break. Forcing you to keep a close eye on your weaponry, you'll need to replace your tools before they get close to breaking point, unless you fancy finding yourself going up against an angry soldier with a blunt handle as your only defence.
Luckily, there's a bit more to the Cursed Crusade than just simply beating people over the head with swords, else it'd get rather boring rather quickly. The main feature that sets the game apart is the ability to enter "the Curse" whenever you see fit, effectively transporting you and your buddy into a hellish version of the medieval world, with flames tearing their way through the crumbled buildings, wayward spirits wandering aimlessly, and demonic imagery all around. Switching into the curse will give Denz and Esteban a huge boost in power, letting them power their way through enemies in less than half the time it'd usually take, making it incredibly useful for those times when you find yourself overrun. It's also the only way to find the some of the collectibles that have been hidden in the level. While each level has coffers hidden that can be found in the normal world, you'll have to enter the curse in order to find the crucifix, and purify the wayward souls. At the end of each stage, you'll be rewarded for the collectibles you've found, earning an upgrade point for each, which you can then spend on levelling your character, giving you better armour, letting you dish more damage, or simply having more health.
However, sadly, the Cursed Crusade isn't without its flaws - although they do take around half the game to become apparent. Firstly, bearing its "100% uncut" logo on the box like a crook would bear an identity tag as a badge of respect, we were a bit concerned about quite how bloody the Cursed Crusade would be. To begin with, at least, it's a lot tamer than we expected. It's only when you start levelling up your combos, and buying the longer, fancier, and more powerful ones that the game starts to show its true colours. Letting you embed a sword in someone's neck with the one hand and then bash it through with an axe in the other, or simply taking someone straight down to the ground, neck first, with a double handed axe, the more you level your combos up, the bloodier, and more unnecessarily violent the moves get, replete with sickening gurgling as your enemies basically drown. Yes, we realise the crusades were a gory time, but just like other games, we don't see why this is necessary. No-one will buy a game purely for the violence (we hope). Whereas for people like us, we can easily be put off.
Ye olde head barbeque.
But it's not just the violence that lets the game down. Far worse is how it handles the co-op mode later in the game. With several sections that force you to split up from your co-op partner, no longer will you be able to help each other out - instead, you'll both have to deal with your own oncoming hordes on your own. Whereas when you're together, you can go into the curse in order to resurrect your partner, when it splits you up, if you die, you're dead, and it'll be game over. Considering the game's nasty habit for sending hundreds of enemies towards you during these sections, you'll likely find yourself dying, a lot. Couple this with the sparse checkpoints, which sometimes ask you to finish practically the entire level before it'll give you a respite, meaning if you die halfway through, you'll start back at the beginning, and it feels like around half way through the game, the developers basically stopped testing it to see if it was playable. It's hard to convey in words quite how frustrating the game gets, and how disappointing it is. Up until we reached the halfway point, we were having a great time. And then it got rubbish.
In its defence, though, the Cursed Crusade is still a lot longer than most games. This is no six hour quickie like Call of Duty, with dozens of levels on offer, and some fairly lengthy cutscenes meaning this ought to last you for weeks, not days. It's just after you reach the half way point that the game starts turning into an unbalanced mess, asking you to perform nigh on impossible feats of skill simply to make your way through the level - and in doing so, becomes very, very annoying.
With a little bit more time and balancing, the Cursed Crusade would have been a lot better. As it stands, it's a pretty enjoyable hack and slash romp, especially when played in co-op, but once you get to the halfway point, and the game starts splitting you up, entirely forgetting about checkpoints, and basically doing all it can to make your life a misery, you may want to consider either turning the difficulty down, or giving up entirely. Such is the game's curse, we suppose.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
