by Al Shield

Created on: May 25, 2008   Last Updated: December 31, 2011

It's not a good day to be a nameless Spartan warrior is it? Your city is the last blip of defense on the Roman map and now it's completely surrounded by said Roman's hell bent on crushing you under heel. You're under trained, barely armored, completely outnumbered and to make it worse now you've got the god of war (Aries, not the God of War from the PlayStation action game) as a voice in your head teaching you how to kill with mad abandon.

But rather than rest on your laurels (or Caesars if the Roman's have their way) it's up to you and your rather poorly skilled mates to fend off the evil occupiers with shield, sword, bow and whatever else you can get your hands on. Luckily for you, you're pretty nifty with a blade and having the god of war blabbering on about new ways to hack and slash is probably more of a blessing in disguise than you'd like to admit.

If you're a big fan of 3rd person run around hack and slash then you'll get a real kick out of Spartan: Total Warrior as the legions come thick and fast and there's hundreds to put to sleep as you race around Sparta trying vainly to save the place. Thankfully it's not always a grind fest as each section of Sparta brings new challenges including bodyguard missions (although why you have to protect King Lionides is beyond me, if the movie 300 is anything to go by he can handle himself quite well.), activate war machines such as catapults and burning oil and eliminate targets like pesky enemy captains.

However a couple of things become painfully clear as you progress namely the Nameless (that's you by the way) is the only Spartan worth his salt in battle as your mates fall around you like leaves of a hurricane affected tree faster than you can say Where the hell is my backup?' and unlike any of the 300, the Spartans in this game are pathetically fragile. The fire support from the archers gets wiped out before they have a chance to be anyway effective and aside from Pollex and Castor your captains, the rest of the army has the longevity of a cupcake at a Jenny Craig meeting. So it's pretty much down to you to wipe out the hordes - which can get frustrating after a while as you find that 90% of them are after your blood and your fellow soldiers STILL need your help because they're useless. Which explains why you have to set off all the catapults to stop Talos the walking Colossus from getting close to walls in one mission and the King is still a grumpy bastard when you finally do.
You just get no thanks saving your city do you?

Graphically Spartan: Total Warrior does okay. It's not as streamlined as say God of War but there's still plenty of different areas to explore, things to break, items to explode, combos to learn and bonuses to collect. The music is nicely dark and at times heroic which does aid in the Roman slaying. The only thing that might make you gives up after a while is the challenge factor. Medium mode is actually very hard to survive in during your first few outings and the easy setting still provides you with a hefty task of trying not to throw yourself into every battle you come across in order to save what little health you have. Controls can be a bit iffy at times too using the left analog stick to move being one and your arrows never seem to go where you want them too the first time around.

For a moody battle game with blade swinging appeal it works well. For something that will last more than a few months however, you might struggle, especially given that it's one player only. Two would have made it a lot more enjoyable but would have been hard to do unless it was split screen, given how many different mission styles you must undertake.

6.5/10

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