By blocking back opponents, (while causing almost no damage), I was able to keep them at bay and thus was given enough time to prepare my next attack. While most attacks are more or less standard fighting game stuff with a little magic in the mix, Spartan's main innovation is the active role that the shield plays in this setup. Thus the controls manage to be intuitive and complex at the same time. These actions are combined with the shoulder buttons to alter movement while the basic setup remains the same. Basically one button is used for attacks on single enemies, one for group attacks and one for jumping. Although the main course of the game consists of defeating incoming hordes of illustrious enemies, it is this variety that keeps Spartan: Total War from getting too repetitive.įortunately the fights are a lot of fun, thanks to a solid control scheme. The tasks that he has to fulfill are diverse and range from sabotaging Roman siege equipment to protecting a peasant village, rescuing prisoners or conquering a stronghold in the Alps. Along his way, the Spartan-as he is referred to throughout the game-is accompanied by various sidekicks and bits of his hometown's army. His journey sees him traveling across countries, visiting a good half a dozen locations from barbarian wastelands, to the sunken city of Troy, to a grande finale in the lion's den: the Coloseum in Rome. Spartan's excusably thin story starts with the Romans trying to invade the hero's hometown and then sets him out on a quest for the legendary spear of Achilles, which he hopes will turn the tides in an otherwise hopeless war. Nevertheless, when I started taking Spartan for what it is-a mass fighter a la Dynasty Warriors-it turned out to be a surprisingly good game. As far as gameplay is concerned, the game sticks to a rather tried and true formula-that is, pitting my super-überpowered fighting champion against the whole of the Roman Empire. Spartan: Total Warrior may not be what I expected, but that doesn't mean it's bad.
And the fact that the game had me fight Roman flamethrower units, a live minotaur and featured a WMD that involved Medusa's gaze being amplified by a giant mirror in order to turn whole battalions of soldiers to stone certainly didn't exactly help to boost the game's historical accuracy.īut I can't fault a game for failing to deliver what it never promised. For example, I wasn't aware that dreadlocks were by any means popular back then. The game's setting is more of a fantasy remix than an actual depiction of ancient Greece. In a number of interviews Creative Assembly stressed that Spartan had little in common with the other entries in the Total War franchise. Well to cut a long story short, none of what I wanted came true. How finally one fighting game would put me on the same ground with my allies and enemies. I instantly dreamt up the whole game: how it would require me to stay in close formations with my comrades, how I would experience the tension of a raging ancient battlefield through the eyes of one soldier. Accordingly, I was quite excited upon hearing that Creative Assembly-a developer known for its accurate real-time strategy (RTS) games set in historical contexts-developed Spartan: Total Warrior, a fighting game that lets me take the role of one single footsoldier in the Spartan army. And I carry a little bit of that childhood fascination with me today. I am not exactly sure why, but I was somehow ensnared by those ancient times of wonder and mystery.
One of my fondest childhood memories is the Sunday reruns of classic sword and sandal movies like Spartacus and Ben Hur.
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