UK REVIEW--One thing should already be clear about The Crusades: They were extremely unpleasant. A Christian military campaign quickly turned sour, with knights becoming little more than mercenaries as they rampaged around and sacked cities across the Holy Land.

Lots of weapon combinations to play around with

Sluggish; awkward controls; Fighting is a chore; Far too repetitive in all aspects; A multitude of technical failings; Entirely forgettable story

Not every developer has the budget of Bethesda, not every publisher the pulling power of PopCap. That probably explains both why you aren't interested in The Cursed Crusade and why you haven't heard of it. It would be unwise, however, to write it off completely.

Platforms: Xbox 360 (Reviewed) | PS3 | PC Publishers: Atlus | dtp entertainment AG A supernatural buddy-action game set during the Crusades that deals in medieval combat with a dab of supernatural empowerment sounds great, right?

Esteban - both as an AI teammate and co-op choice; Supernatural elements are a nice touch; Yeah; now I'm starting to struggle here

Awful cut scenes; Awful combat; Incredibly repetitive gameplay

The Crusades remain mostly underused in gaming. Recently we had the mediocre First Templar, and now developer Kylotonn is taking a stab at it with The Cursed Crusade. The Crusades are ripe for...

+ Combat can be satisfying; + Co-op is fun; + The leveling system

Glitches hamper the experience; The writing is painful; Lockon mechanic is broken

Games Xtreme takes a look at the Templar's Curse in the Cursed Crusade.

Usually, we're suckers for this sort of thing: a co-op–enabled tale of a young, sword-carrying Templar seeking his missing dad amid much decimated Euro-madness. Throw in an unfortunate curse that lets our hero wield fire and fend off a stalking personification of Death, plus some buddy-cop banter...

+ Plenty of checklist-type stats and collectibles for completists; online campaign co-op

? Why's Esteban's voice-acting so crazy over-the-top

The protagonists of The Cursed Crusade are damned to hell, trying to escape death and seek redemption by fighting in the French holy war. Unfortunately, they're trapped in a game with few redeeming qualities, a dull, pretentious hack-and-slash that fails in almost every way.

This game finds a way to turn exciting-sounding historical events, such as the siege of the Croatian city Zara, into linear marches through static environments cluttered with a bunch of melee battles that all play out the same.

if a developer is going make a game this poor. it should at least be dirt cheap

none i guess gore

everything to many useless cut scenes; unresponsive controls, bad camera and list goes on and on; if you can pay less than 10 bucks for this game i think it might be worth it

Um... where's the ending?

Wow; this history is really accurate

One terrible boss fight is bad-but the exact same boss four times in a row