14 DAY TRIAL // The year of the Olympic Games is as good a period as it gets to release Olympian-themed games. And as the DVD version of the animated movie Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games is set for a summer release, the people at Atari have announced that the Xbox 360 version of the game Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games is going to be launched at the same time.
The game is an interesting, if not great, addition to the Asterix and Obelix gaming universe. The Olympic Games are the perfect venue in which the two protagonists can demonstrate their special capacities, fuelled as they are by the strange concoction brewed by the druids. There are a lot of Olympic events to compete in and, even if the game is very much oriented on button mashing, there's something entertaining about winning. The competition-based mini-games are not a big part of the game but are entertaining in their own right.
The single player campaign is a pretty standard fare for an adventure game based loosely upon a movie intellectual property. Asterix is the one that runs for most of the time and he is mainly tasked with pulling switches and getting into hard to reach places, while Obelix is the muscle character of the duo, pushing boulders and beating up enemies. The game is linear, with very little variation in what happens along the way. Puzzles will be solved, collectibles will be collected and enemies will be taken down as the two characters go out and try to reach the end of the story.
Visually, the game looks good on all the other consoles and will probably look even better on the Xbox 360, as the developers take their time to polish the graphics. There are a few main and interesting touches that really pull the whole game together, like meeting Neofrommatrix or the equally funny Watchadivix.
Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games is already available for the PC, the PlayStation 2, the Nintendo Wii and the DS.