A brawler designed around humor featuring two satirical stooges, Slaps & Beans 2 is a simple, nonsensical co-op romp that offers straightforward, albeit repetitive, fun if you fumble your way around all the game breaking glitches.
Nothing about the story makes any sense so there is no point in trying to explain it. Just know that you play as a skinny dude and a pudgy guy as they move from one ridiculous set piece to the next. Along the way, you’ll need to punch every random NPC in the face, just like any beat’em up, until you reach the end of the stage, a boss, or hit an environmental puzzle in which you need to utilize the skinny’s guy ability to climb or the big dude’s strength.
Combat is fine although it gets repetitive by the third stage. There is a strong attack, a light attack, and the ability to block but most enemies mindlessly run directly into your fists without much issue. At another attempt to make combat more interesting, River City Ransom-like weapons are all over the place including sticks, pots, chairs and more. Most carry the same combat properties so there isn’t much variety in the over abundance of available weaponry.
One of the main highlights must be the excellent pixel artwork as it has realistic properties but with a humorous tone. It is a good-looking game complete with impressive zooming camera effects; even the idle animations are funny. The voice work, built around stupid humor, is also well done and fits the mood of the visual style.
Unfortunately, this game is riddled with bugs of all types. Not only did the game crash me almost every time I booted it up (as you can see from my embedded stream in this article) but also ran into unpassable trigger points. One of the early stages, for example, has the player fight in and around a boxing ring, facing off against dozens of foes. No matter what I did, the main boss wouldn’t take damage and got stuck in one place, leaving me unable to make progress. Enemies sometimes get stuck just off screen too, preventing passage. Granted, this was the Xbox version. Not sure if the other console releases have these game breaking bugs.
Even if the bugs were squashed, Slap and Beans 2 is a basic, repetitive brawler but with excellent, unexpected humor, best played with a local buddy at your side.
Also Try: the TMNT Collection
Better Than: waiting for a River City Random compilation
Wait For It: another brawler to be released on the SNES Switch Online service
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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