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With
box-office hits such as Gladiator and Lord of the Rings,
it is quite clear that the masses love a good epic. One of the
pulling points of these films is the fact that you are guaranteed at
least one big fight. In fact, as Lord Of The Rings: Return of the
King showed, the bigger the better. With a lot of these battles
being created using CGI, you would think it would be only a matter
of time before this kind of battle was recreated as a videogame.
Creative Assembly, developers of the top selling Total War
series on PC, have perfected the art of bringing huge battles to
life as a strategy game. In fact, they are so proficient at this,
that the engine from Rome: Total War was used for the BBC
series Time Commanders. So, with the success of their current series confirmed, Creative
Assembly have decided to break into the console market with an
Arcade style Hack-N’-Slash based around their trademark epic
battles. The end result of this is the multi-format release; Spartan:
Total Warrior.
Spartan:
Total Warrior
follows the basic Hack-N’-Slash system used in a number of games
such as The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and God Of
War. In this title you take control of the Spartan, an unnamed
Spartan Warrior who is on a mission to rid ancient Greece of the
invading Roman Empire. The game starts with Sparta under siege from
thousands of soldiers and a huge Iron Man. This Iron Man is the
first of many nods to the classic film Jason and the Argonauts,
in fact this is not the only time you will find references to epic
films set around this era.
Armed
with a sword, shield and bow and backed up by a few squads of
Spartans, it looks like your going to kick some ass. However, as
soon as you charge into combat it becomes apparent that this is not
a game where mashing the buttons is going to work; all enemies can
block your attacks - and they do, at every opportunity, making the
game a lot more complicated than the usual Hack-N’-Slash as well
as making it a lot harder. This effectively makes the game more
realistic, as you are man, not an unstoppable war machine; at least,
not yet anyway. The difficultly is further increased by the fact
that Creative Assembly are very  keen to show off the impressive
capabilities of their console developed engine. Expect have to fight
literally hundreds of troops at the same time, each with a different
method of attack and all wanting Spartan blood.
As
daunting as difficulty of the game may be, you wouldn’t be a
Spartan unless you were hardcore! The Spartan has a range of attacks
available based on the weapon he is using at the time, with pressing
the A button causing the Spartan to strike one enemy and B to strike
many. He also has
the ability to block all attacks and you will find
that blocking and picking your time to strike is essential to
winning battles. Scoring hits on enemies causes the Spartan’s rage
bar to increase and once this is past a certain level the Spartan
can unleash an especially powerful version of the standard attacks
which tends to cause the mass decapitation of enemy troops. The
Spartan also has access to magical powers - once again - based on
the weapon he is using. These again can used to damage large numbers
of troops or take out a specific foe. Using
magical powers requires
you to fill Mana Bars by collecting Souls, either from Shrines or by
killing enemies and, as the game progresses; you will gain up to
three Mana Bars allowing you to cause some serious destruction.
Spartan:
Total Warrior
also includes limited role-play elements; on completing a Level you
are given several Tokens, known as the Favour Of The Gods, with
which to upgrade your health, damage and magic power. Once all of
these are filled you advance to the next level and are given a new
set of Armour to wear. This system is less than extensive as there
are only three levels and you will always reach maximum power by
Level Twelve.
For
the number of enemies on  the screen, which can be upward of one
hundred and fifty, the graphics are very good and there is no
slow-down whatsoever, however, the loading times are more than
disgusting. Although it’s clear the title has been developed for
the PlayStation2 and ported to the GameCube and Xbox, it remains
inexcusable to have such an extensive load on a system that often
benefits from having seamless loading. All models are richly
detailed and Cut-Scenes use in-game graphics and do not suffer for
it. The lighting on some Levels, especially in the dungeon type
Levels is top notch and at times you will forget that this is a
console title. The Level design is also very good, the castle sieges
are especially epic and the tasks you must perform are quite
diverse. Puzzles involving the use of Fire Arrows to blow up
explosive crates are overused slightly
but this can be forgiven.
Boss battles are varied from battling a human adversary to several
mythological creatures. One of the outstanding features of this
product is the sound. Every slice of your sword is accompanied by an
especially visceral sound effect and kicking a legionary of a
building will cause him to wail convincingly. The music is also
brilliant, imagine a cross between the Gladiator Soundtrack and
The Prodigy and you are pretty close. Thumping bass lines and
choir voices combine to really immerse you in the game.
It’s
very likely that you will die with regularity for the majority of
this game, make no mistake about it, this game is hard. The learning
curve is very steep and only through perseverance will you make it
through to the Final Boss. The difficulty barrier may discourage the
casual gamer, but if you are looking for a challenge then this game
is ideal. The Story Mode consists of fourteen Levels based over
three Acts with each Level theoretically taking between twenty and
forty minutes to complete. The reality is that the difficulty of the
game means that Levels can take several hours to complete. The other
mode is Arena; in which you must fight your way through ten waves of
increasingly harder enemies to attain a high score. Extra arenas can
be unlocked by playing through the Story Mode. Throughout Story Mode
you will find Chests which contain parts of Archimedes Diary and
Spartan Helms. Archimedes Dairy Pages unlock Concept Art and Spartan
Helms allow access to extra objects in Arena Mode such as Health
Shrines and allied Bowmen.  Even with these features there isn’t a
great deal of replayability as you’ll find a lot of the secrets on
your first time through.
Despite
this games difficulty, it is still a lot of fun. It is clear that
the developers paid a lot of attention to making this game feel as
much like an epic film as they could, and in that capacity this game
is spot on. There are loads of memorable moments such as charging in
formation with your brethren before crashing into the enemy line or
fighting your way round the ramparts of a castle kicking Romans off
the side in true swashbuckling style, launching arrows into
advancing troops and narrowly avoiding incoming fire. It is obvious
that comparisons will be made with God of War on the
PlayStation2 but the game is not a similar as you may think. Where
God
of War has extensive puzzle elements, you will not find yourself
pushing blocks around in Spartan: Total Warrior. This game is
all about the fighting and the only real puzzles you will find are
how to defeat the Bosses. However, Spartan: Total Warrior is
not without its flaws. Reaching a Checkpoint with low health can
make the following battle literally impossible and may force the
player to restart the Level; not something you will want to do if
you have been battling for an hour. Also, changing the Camera angle
while moving can cause the Spartan to become locked in the direction
he is facing. Nevertheless, if you are a fan of Hack-N’- Slash
titles you will find that Spartan: Total Warrior is one of
the best available.
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