My friend and I have been playing through The First Templar. It was $12 on Amazon, and one of the only co-op games of the current generation we had not yet played. It's an odd little game, with some fun ideas. It's as quirky as you might expect a "budget" game to be, but has some saving graces.
The writing and voice acting are pretty bad. Even the animations during the in-engine cutscenes are noticeably sparse ("Roland" only has one animation: punching his left hand, no matter what the discussion is about). Enemy variation is also pretty drab. There are basically three or four types of enemies you will fight all the way through the 10ish hour game. The character leveling is strange, and never really proves why it needs to be stange.
The ugly stuff out of the way, the game is still fun, as long as you have a co-op partner to shoot the shit with. The combat is remarkably deep, even if it can get a bit clunky from time to time. There are lots of moves, combos, shield bashes, dodges, blocks, etc. Everything you want in a medieval sword fighting game. It feels a little bit like Assassin's Creed sometimes, except with a more warrior-like character. The combat easily keeps you entertained enough to last ten hours.
The achievements are easy, the plot is sometimes laughable, and the gameplay itself is pretty fun. If you like co-op games and want something cheap to play, you could do much worse.
A word of warning though, this game does not install on the Xbox for some reason (never seen this before). Even with an Xbox 360 S, be ready for your system to sound like a plane.
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