Gladiator sword of vengeance.

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wolverinos
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Before there was God of War, there was Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance. While it's not quite as good as GoW, it's still better than it got credit for. It's one of those types of games that if it was marketed to be something big, it would have took off and became a series. But Acclaim basically released it with no marketing whatsoever, and nobody really knew about it.


The game starts with you as a gladiator champion in ancient Rome that throws you into battle right away. You instantly get to see how nice the graphics are with good detail and impressive bloom lighting effects. The characters look and animated nicely, the gameplay is tight and the violence is brutal. Blood splatters everywhere, and you can even perform finishing moves on your opponents. Anyone who likes gladiator themes should be impressed with the game right from the start. It's not the type of game that takes its time getting to the action, because you're thrown into combat as soon as you press start. But this isn't just a gladiator arena battle game, and it's not long before a certain event occurs that sends you on an adventure.

The game is similar to GoW in that it's an action/hack-and-slash that takes place in ancient Rome. It also has fixed camera angles, and you can only zoom in and out, but I prefer having the camera zoomed out to get a better view of the environments. It's also linear like GoW where you basically make your way down a predetermined route fighting onslaughts of enemies. There are a few puzzle elements sprinkled into the environments for variety, but for the most part this is a hack-and-slash game. You begin your adventure fairly weak with just a standard sword and no special abilities. You fight a few easy to defeat skeletons, and everything seems a little ho-hum at this point. However, you will come across altars in the levels that offer challenges. If you complete the challenges, you're rewarded with something. The rewards consist of another health block, combo string powers, better weapons, etc. Some challenges are optional, while others are mandatory. You can avoid doing some of the challenges, but you'll regret it later in the game if you pass too many of them up as they're rewards are very helpful when things get harder.

You have a rage meter that fills a little every time that you successfully land multi-hit combos. Once it's full a fist icon appears next to it showing that you can unleash your rage move. You can either become invincible and more powerful for a few seconds, or launch a devastating attack. Also, some crates and pots have a fist icon on them showing that they can only be broken when you activate your rage power. In the challenges you can obtain a combo string meter that activates a power when you land consecutive combo attacks against your foes. The more combo attacks that you land, the higher the meter goes giving you more powers along the way. If you're successful with combos you can become one lean mean fighting machine. But if you get hit, the meter drops back to the bottom and you lose your powers. Your normal moves are a little slow and sluggish, and you don't have that many combos, but when you're powered up you're fast and can unleash lots of cool combos to take down your foes with.


I recommend this game to anyone who likes action/hack-and-slash games similar to GoW. Don't go into expecting it to be as good as GoW, because it's not. But it's still a a lot of fun if you like the genre. It looks good, plays good, offers a lengthy adventure and is quite challenging. While the adventure portion after the opening arena battle starts off a little slow, once it gets going it's quite exciting. It's a little deeper than your standard hack-and-slash game, and offers enough variety to keep it from feeling repetitive. You should be able to find it used for cheap these days.

FistOfThe North
Sounds similar to that new "RYSE" game coming soon.

Kazenji
Seen this one around, Cheap to buy too.

wolverinos
Here is a gameplay video. those are the first minutes of the game.
it would be so cool if they released it on the PSN store.

QkymY-gDWho

just a side note. this is the beginning of the game so you have limited amount of combos, however as you progress you unlock new weapons, new magic skills and new combos.

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