Ancient Greece has been a very popular subject lately with numerous films, TV shows, documentaries, and of course video games based in these epic time periods. Sega decided to tap into this potential cash cow by enlisting the help of The Creative Assembly, a company best known for their critically acclaimed Total War series on the PC.

Last year, Creative Assembly released Rome: Total War for the PC. After the success of that title and the Total War franchise as a whole, Creative Assembly must have decided that it was about time they tried their luck in the console ring with a new franchise.

Enter Spartan: Total Warrior, a game that puts you in the leather sandals of a warrior of Sparta known only as Spartan.

Gameplay
Spartan: Total Warrior seems to be influenced quite a bit by games like God of War and the Dynasty Warriors series. With over a hundred enemies on screen at once and dozens of moves, you are guaranteed to remove quiet a few vital organs. You will slice, dice and literally tear your enemies limb from limb, just like my good buddy Kratos did in God of War.

Also similar to both God of War and Dynasty Warriors is the linear path you follow throughout the game, you are always told where to go and what to do. There is a sensation of heroism while you fend off the Roman army from breaking down a door to kill the king, but unlike a real war you are not really changing the course of the battle, you’re just following out tasks already set for you. We would have personally preferred things be a bit more open ended and allow for branching story arches, but that’s what sequels are for. That really doesn’t change the fact that decimating a hundred Roman soldiers and watching blood fill the screen isn’t incredibly cool. Unfortunately the Romans aren’t the only ones being decimated. Your poor controller will likely take a beating due to Spartan's frustrating battles, as you get overwhelmed so easily and die rather frequently.

Luckily the gameplay is fun and not a burden to replay a couple of times, but cheap deaths are never any fun. It also isn’t any fun to be attacked while you try to heal!

This is seriously one of Spartan's biggest annoyances. You will always find a convenient placed health or magic shrine when you need it. The problem is since you find it in the heat of a battle, when you try and replenish your health or magic, every single solider out on the field decide to stop everything in order to come over and rain on your parade.

It’s easy to pull off fancy moves with your numerous weapons in Spartan. Holding down the R trigger gives your attacks a little more power, and holding down L puts you in a defensive position allowing you to block attacks and throw dozens of enemies off of you in an instant. Special moves and abilities are also simple to use once the meter is filled up.

Then we have every action game’s biggest hurdle: the camera. Spartan has a pretty good system, but the camera allows you zoom in and out of the action. This becomes a hassle when you’re trying to move the camera to the left and the right with the right analog stick. You can’t get it too close to the action or you will have a hard time seeing what is going on. Once you get close to the Spartan, you lose your peripheral vision and it becomes somewhat of a chore to find your enemies. This brings me to the targeting system that is also at times quite irritating, especially when you are trying to pick archers off of a ledge with your trusty bow. Alas, the targeting system often decides it would rather target the guys below the archers first. This forces you to move the target around dozens of enemies until you get the one you are looking for. By then several arrows and blades have already hit you and your life bar is now halfway depleted.


Before the Romans invaded, the city was fairly corpse free…
Graphics
Character models aren’t the best and Creative Assembly could have done a little more with the Greek artwork and overall design (since when do Spartan warriors sport dreadlocks anyway?). Aside from that everything runs as smooth as butter. You’d think a game with over a hundred characters on screen at once would have all sorts of hiccups, but not Spartan; it runs like a champ. The character models are full of detail and just look great considering the amount of characters normally on the screen at once. You would think there would be a slow down with all those characters on the screen, but Creative Assembly has managed to create an engine that can handle the sheer number of characters without slowing down the action. Instead, the downfall is a lack of detail in the characters. All the soldiers use the same animations and look the same, thus they look like a bunch of old school cylons (clones for those of you who aren’t complete geeks).

Sound
Somewhat of a mixed bag in the sound department: Cool rock tunes compliment the otherwise appropriately ambient music. Sound effects are spot on and the voice acting isn’t all that bad. It’s especially cool having Ares play the role of your motivational speaker throughout the game. While not quite as epic as some other games set in the time period, God of War, it does manage to get the job done.

Final Word
Spartan: Total Warrior is a very gratifying game, with a lot of minor problems that ultimately hold it back from greatness, I would have personally loved to see co-op multiplayer. It didn’t detract from the game, but co-op in a game like Spartan is always a nice little touch. Considering this is Creative Assembly’s first console outing in what appears to be a new franchise; I personally cannot wait to see what the future holds for Total Warrior.