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A local game store that sells, games for your computer, is having a sale and I was having a look see whilst wandering about.
And discovered a game I liked the look of, so I bought it. Hey £20 isn't going to break the bank so if it sucked, I'd sell it to a stupid person.
However, I managed to have on of those rare treats where something surpasses your expectations and is actually very, very good.
Gladius.
The easy way to know if you'd like it is if you enjoyed the following pieces of entertainment:
Star Wars:KOTOR
Gladiator (Ridley Scott movie)
Barbarian (old Spectrum game with head-lopping)
If you answered yes to more than 1, then you really owe it to yourself to check it out.
You own and run a Gladiator school and beat the crap out of loads of others in an arena to advance. That's the basic version.
But the basic version as in "You find bits of a map and kill aliens" describes KOTOR.
There are 2 different storylines depending on whether you choose the male or female hero at the start, and each story lasts approx 50-60 hours (according to reviews I checked out afterwards), so it's an immense bloody game.
And, like KOTOR, it's a bit slow to reveal it's charms. You start with 2 basic, level 1 Gladiators that basically throw pebbles and run away instead of being mental Romans, but after a couple hours you start to buy and hire others to join your school, travelling from town to town to engage in fights.
There are 4 (I think) lands, with about 6-7 towns in each. Each town has a league consisting of about 40 battles split into 4-5 seperate divisions (you don't have to do them all, nor do all of each division - just enough to qualify as a victory in that one), then a tournament and then a championship.
So you're looking at about 50 or 60 fights per town.
I've been playing for 24hrs and haven't even managed to get off the 1st land yet, but it's huge fun to just smash things in.
The Gladiators are split into:
Light, Medium, Heavy, Support, Beasts.
And each catagory has about 15 different types, so the possibilities are endless. I've just had a ruck with 3 Minotaurs, before that was against 2 massive wolves and their pups. Next up is against 5 heavies armed with tridents and nets.
The graphics are superb, sound is excellent, gameplay is turn-based (but not crap like the FF games) and very fast flowing. You can use obstacles in the arenas to your advantage (like boxes or natural rock shelves for a height-advantage).
Think a video game version of that bit in Gladiator when he storms out and butchers those blokes, chained to the African and then stands there shouting "Are you not entertained????" afterwards.
Bloodthirsty, violent, tactical, exciting, massive depth to the fights, one of the largest games in terms of longevity and hours spent on it.
It's Star Wars:KOTOR with Maximus instead of some tossy space fairy, and massive great swords/hammers/tridents/axes/spears/maces/chariots instead of blaster pistols.
Well worth £20 and I recommend it 100% for those looking for a superb mix of tactics and smashing people's skulls in with melee weapons.
And discovered a game I liked the look of, so I bought it. Hey £20 isn't going to break the bank so if it sucked, I'd sell it to a stupid person.
However, I managed to have on of those rare treats where something surpasses your expectations and is actually very, very good.
Gladius.
The easy way to know if you'd like it is if you enjoyed the following pieces of entertainment:
Star Wars:KOTOR
Gladiator (Ridley Scott movie)
Barbarian (old Spectrum game with head-lopping)
If you answered yes to more than 1, then you really owe it to yourself to check it out.
You own and run a Gladiator school and beat the crap out of loads of others in an arena to advance. That's the basic version.
But the basic version as in "You find bits of a map and kill aliens" describes KOTOR.
There are 2 different storylines depending on whether you choose the male or female hero at the start, and each story lasts approx 50-60 hours (according to reviews I checked out afterwards), so it's an immense bloody game.
And, like KOTOR, it's a bit slow to reveal it's charms. You start with 2 basic, level 1 Gladiators that basically throw pebbles and run away instead of being mental Romans, but after a couple hours you start to buy and hire others to join your school, travelling from town to town to engage in fights.
There are 4 (I think) lands, with about 6-7 towns in each. Each town has a league consisting of about 40 battles split into 4-5 seperate divisions (you don't have to do them all, nor do all of each division - just enough to qualify as a victory in that one), then a tournament and then a championship.
So you're looking at about 50 or 60 fights per town.
I've been playing for 24hrs and haven't even managed to get off the 1st land yet, but it's huge fun to just smash things in.
The Gladiators are split into:
Light, Medium, Heavy, Support, Beasts.
And each catagory has about 15 different types, so the possibilities are endless. I've just had a ruck with 3 Minotaurs, before that was against 2 massive wolves and their pups. Next up is against 5 heavies armed with tridents and nets.
The graphics are superb, sound is excellent, gameplay is turn-based (but not crap like the FF games) and very fast flowing. You can use obstacles in the arenas to your advantage (like boxes or natural rock shelves for a height-advantage).
Think a video game version of that bit in Gladiator when he storms out and butchers those blokes, chained to the African and then stands there shouting "Are you not entertained????" afterwards.
Bloodthirsty, violent, tactical, exciting, massive depth to the fights, one of the largest games in terms of longevity and hours spent on it.
It's Star Wars:KOTOR with Maximus instead of some tossy space fairy, and massive great swords/hammers/tridents/axes/spears/maces/chariots instead of blaster pistols.
Well worth £20 and I recommend it 100% for those looking for a superb mix of tactics and smashing people's skulls in with melee weapons.
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YES!!
Finished it on the easy setting today, took me just under 80 hours as I went hunting for a few battles I'd let slip before moving onto the Caltha.
Finished it on the easy setting today, took me just under 80 hours as I went hunting for a few battles I'd let slip before moving onto the Caltha.
Following hot on the heels of Gladius come Wrath Unleashed, also by Lucasarts and also containing a lot of strategy and fighting.
This time the fights are in real time though.
This time the fights are in real time though.
sounds alright
Fiery Salamander wrote:
>
> oh right, lol you get to play a yeti?
Casters, barbarians, centurions, yetis, wolves, bears, amazons, desert people, big hulking roman death machines, mongrel shamans, mongrels, unique characters and loads and loads of others.
Like I said there's a serious amount of variety, and this's before you throw in tactical moves, special moves, magic, weapons and various game types like king of the hill!
>
> oh right, lol you get to play a yeti?
Casters, barbarians, centurions, yetis, wolves, bears, amazons, desert people, big hulking roman death machines, mongrel shamans, mongrels, unique characters and loads and loads of others.
Like I said there's a serious amount of variety, and this's before you throw in tactical moves, special moves, magic, weapons and various game types like king of the hill!
Hedfix wrote:
> Fiery Salamander wrote:
> Do you ever run out of fighters? because they must die
>
> In the tournaments you get healed afterwards, however if you have an
> encounter outside of towns then if a character dies they're gone for
> good.
>
> Haven't lost a character yet, but I had to get my Yeti to leg it last
> night!
oh right, lol you get to play a yeti?
> Fiery Salamander wrote:
> Do you ever run out of fighters? because they must die
>
> In the tournaments you get healed afterwards, however if you have an
> encounter outside of towns then if a character dies they're gone for
> good.
>
> Haven't lost a character yet, but I had to get my Yeti to leg it last
> night!
oh right, lol you get to play a yeti?
Fiery Salamander wrote:
> Do you ever run out of fighters? because they must die
In the tournaments you get healed afterwards, however if you have an encounter outside of towns then if a character dies they're gone for good.
Haven't lost a character yet, but I had to get my Yeti to leg it last night!
> Do you ever run out of fighters? because they must die
In the tournaments you get healed afterwards, however if you have an encounter outside of towns then if a character dies they're gone for good.
Haven't lost a character yet, but I had to get my Yeti to leg it last night!
mikelar wrote:
> sounds pretty good.
>
> ive been looking for a decent co-op game to play with my brother and
> this is a change from the FPS games we've been playing. For 20
> bones, i can't say no.
Co-op could be good, I haven't tried it myself as it's a bit of 'control freak' kind of game (Like Phantom Crash) and there are some combo's that require timing, if someone else mucks up those combo's and you lose the fight it'd get annoying quickly.
> sounds pretty good.
>
> ive been looking for a decent co-op game to play with my brother and
> this is a change from the FPS games we've been playing. For 20
> bones, i can't say no.
Co-op could be good, I haven't tried it myself as it's a bit of 'control freak' kind of game (Like Phantom Crash) and there are some combo's that require timing, if someone else mucks up those combo's and you lose the fight it'd get annoying quickly.
Do you ever run out of fighters? because they must die
sounds pretty good.
ive been looking for a decent co-op game to play with my brother and this is a change from the FPS games we've been playing. For 20 bones, i can't say no.
ive been looking for a decent co-op game to play with my brother and this is a change from the FPS games we've been playing. For 20 bones, i can't say no.
Somehow when I read the title I knew Gladius was going to be the game.
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