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Spartan: Total Warrior Review
Jon Wilcox
12/10/2005
TVG heads back to the ancient city-state of Sparta to slay the Romans and everything else that stands in our way...
Once upon a time there was a development studio called The Creative Assembly who formed a great reputation for forging strong historical strategy titles under the Total War banner. Loved by many, the news that came in March 2005 that Japanese firm SEGA had firstly signed a publishing agreement with the developer for their console 3rd person hack ānā slash and then acquired The Creative Assembly as part of its plans to strengthen its Western audience, was a real kick to the teeth - just check out TVGās forums at the time. Claims that the development of Spartan was the death knell for the Total War PC titles and that The Creative Assembly were just draining their good reputation with a watered down cash-cow were rife around the PC community.
Seven months on from this foaming at the mouth attitude comes the release of Spartan: Total Warrior for the home consoles. Set in 300BC, the game follows the story of a Spartan citizen known asā¦The Spartan. With the Roman army camped outside the last outpost of the Ancient Greek city states, the hero of the title lines up in front of the King only to have his attention drawn away by the voice of Ares the Greek god of war, who promises a road of self-discovery if he manages to thwart the Roman invasion. On his journey to do Aresā bidding The Spartan picks up a few non-playable characters that aid him on his quest, which plays out more like classic sixties movies such as Jason & The Argonauts thanks to the Ray Harryhausen style mythological beings the group encounter on their way ā“ including Beowulf, Medusa, and the walking dead.
As well as using a bow, sword and shield in the gameās battles (and the ability to temporarily fight with the weapons of defeated bosses including the Spear of Achilles and the Blades of Athena), players can also use ancient magic and rage attacks that can be quite frankly life saving. Using a combination of the primary and secondary buttons, players can easily string together fast and deadly combinations that certainly have the ability to cut a pack of opponents faster than a hot sword through a cadaver. Though certain boss weapons (such as Medusaās shield, useful for turning mortal enemies into temporary blocks of stone) are carried through by The Spartan, others are used once and then forgotten about at the end of that chapter; it would have been nice to continue using some of these later in the game via the character menu screen that appears before engaging with the next chapter.
While weāre on the subject of the character menu screen, Spartan: Total Warrior also has a limited RPG element that kicks in at the end of every chapter (the game is split into a number of Acts and Chapters) thanks to a number of tokens known as āFavour of the Godsā. Though itās hardly the most complex attribute screen, it does allow gamers to adjust The Spartanās Health, Damage, and Power which when filled upgrade him to āHeroā status ā“ meaning he wears a helmet and chest plate. It doesnāt require a strategic mind to realise that building up the characterās power whilst leaving his health to a lower level isnāt the most helpful move to make.
Though such attempts to add depth to the gameplay makes for a nice feature, the heart of the Spartan experience really boils down to a linear hack n slash title, and whilst it has robust combat/control systems there is very little variety in the gameplay to really hold the attention span for long settings. Having said that, it does tap into the desire for instant gratification thanks mainly to the first level of the game - the defence of Sparta - which acts as a baptism of fire for players and a great introduction to the basic gameplay dynamics. Besides engaging numerous enemies across many ancient lands, Spartan also uses contextual environmental interactions that feature heavily in Total Warrior; so whether that's lighting bomb fuses (something that tends to occur frequently throughout the lands surrounding Sparta) or using Blazers that fire explosive arrows at the opposition, a further sense of immersion is implemented into the gameworld for the player.
Chapter lengths can be quite long though these are broken up thankfully with regular save checkpoints throughout the game, a good thing too since the gameplay can be quite unforgiving at times. Situations where players face up to end-of-level bosses with little health can occur leaving endless re-enactments of encounters with said bosses, trying to discover chinks in their armour - something that will bring back fond memories for the slight more 'mature' gamers. In some respects Spartan is a bit of a seesaw title with certain sections more challenging than others though this can be mostly contributed to poor decision making by the player.
One of the more laughable elements of Spartan has to be the voice acting, which is absolutely terrible thanks to Ares sounding like a bad actor with his pitch dropping about 12 octaves, and the character of Castor (one of The Spartanās companions) sounding exactly like the Kelloggās Frosties mascot, Tony the Tiger - in fact you half expect him to yell āTheyāre Grrrreat!ā But as we all know, bad voice acting doesnāt spell the end of a game (just re-visit the original Resident Evil) though it does drop the game to almost B-movie standard - something that seems to fit rather well with the Harryhausen visual effects.
Away from the main Story mode, players can also return to completed chapters as single missions, and a Battle Arena mode that sees gamers face up to innumerable waves of enemies in a seemingly endless display of violence and bloodshed, which at very least means that the option is the perfect way to relieve stress! As players discover various bonus items in the main Story mode, a range of objects slowly begins to be unlocked for placement into these Arenas such as Health shrines or even additional back up in the form of Spartan reinforcements. As each area is completed in the main game such as Sparta, the barbarian Badlands, and Troy, they become unlocked in the Battle Arena mode thus offering some sort of incentive for players to progress through the Story mode.
