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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.
I may well pick this up if I see it.
> Jesus sundaynight, you really are stupid.
> It's known as "txting", although I didn't expect to have to
> use parentheses to highlight the fact. Why is it called
> "txting" and not "texting"? Because of the
> tendency to miss out vowels when tExting people, as well as
> abbreviations such as "U" for "you",
> "l8tr" for "later" etc etc.
> You are on a computer, it would take a few microseconds to use
> capitals and such instead of your annoying txt speak that marks you
> as a mid-late teen with the language skills of a 3rd year English
> student from Bora Bora.
>
> Now shouldn't you be out vandalising bus stops or something?
now now little boy dont go getting upset. I could use capitals and such but this is just a forum site and im not gonna win anything for typing properly on here. so if i want to type in' txt form i will u sad lil man who seems to think hes something special. So i will continue to type how ever the hell i feel like if thats ok.
Oh and im doing well enough so i dont have time to be vandalising bus stops.
> I was actually considering this, because NGC said despite it being
> slow, it really did reveal excellence later on, and it sounded
> intriguing if a little snail-like.
---------
Yep, initially it's a tad plodding. You have 2 gladiators and they have zero abilities, lots of plot exposition to churn out and whatnot.
My in-game clock says I've been playing for 19hrs (and change) and I've still yet to advance beyond amateur ranking or complete the regional championship to travel to another land, but the battles are fast, brutal and excellent fun now.
Worth sticking with, much like KOTOR was a bore whilst on Taris learning everything but took off once you began exploring other worlds.
Gladius isn't a no-brainer smash'em up, it requires tactical thinking and the like, but it's superb fun.
It's known as "txting", although I didn't expect to have to use parentheses to highlight the fact. Why is it called "txting" and not "texting"? Because of the tendency to miss out vowels when tExting people, as well as abbreviations such as "U" for "you", "l8tr" for "later" etc etc.
You are on a computer, it would take a few microseconds to use capitals and such instead of your annoying txt speak that marks you as a mid-late teen with the language skills of a 3rd year English student from Bora Bora.
Now shouldn't you be out vandalising bus stops or something?
> mr sunday night wrote:
> Goatboy wrote:
> txting
> maybe you should take up your own advice mate.
>
> Maybe somebody once defined 'irony' and it looked like this.
yes i know which is why i say sorry...dont mean it but ill say it.
> Goatboy wrote:
> txting
> maybe you should take up your own advice mate.
Maybe somebody once defined 'irony' and it looked like this.
Legacy Of Kain: Defiance is another like that - I loved Soul Reaver 2, so I may snap it up.
Rush 2049 was a game I bought because it might be good. Excellent review, and it turned out to be one of my favourites.
> txting
maybe you should take up your own advice mate.
> mr sunday night wrote:
> u like this game????dear god! i played a demo of it the other month
> and turned it off after 1 minute. rubbish game.
> ---------
>
> I'm very happy for you.
> Please come back when you've mastered basic English please, you're
> not txting your feral gang of mates now.
oh sorry oh great one...forgot you have to use proper english when typeing on the computer.
Ok i'll try again, This game is pants. it looks pants and plays pants. Its is a rubbish game and one of the worst i have ever played.