Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Rocks"

Ancient Rome, Julius Caesar has just been assasinated. One of the main characters, centurion Agrippa, is kicking some barbarian butt when he hears that his father is accused of assasinating Caesar. His friend, the other main character, Octavianus is the nephew of the late Caesar and tags along with Agrippa in the search for truth. Agrippa ends up as a gladiator and Octavianus starts playing Solid Snake, sneaking around and cross-dressing as a servant girl... (I'm not kidding. It happens only once, but it really happens) The plot is a bit silly, but when the action elements are good, I'm ready to overlook the silliness. And oh boy, the action rocks.

Combat is smooth and simple. Grab a weapon, hit the enemy until your weapon breaks, repeat pattern. But Agrippa know a lot of other tricks, like punching, blocking, dodging, countering, grappling for weapons, throwing weapons and doing a nice German Suplex. The more tricks you do in front of the audience, the more you get points and bigger weapons. There's a reward system based on the amount of points you get and also achievements, like appeling to the crowd while holding up an enemy head. You can really spend a lot of time trying to get the best high scores and all the achievements. Challenging and fun. The combat is insane, blood and guts. Enemies get battered, there's fountains of blood, you can hit your opponent's with their own limbs and you can crush, impale or even burn your opponent's. This game is not for the faint at heart. There's little opponents, big opponent's and animal opponent's.

So, Agrippa is our killer and Octavianus is our little infiltrator. Octavianus can't take a hit and he seldoms is able to deliver any damage to the guards. He can drop banana peels, don disguises, knock the enemy out with a vase, all the usual stuff. The stealth sequences aren't that good, but they keep advancing the story nicely. So what can I say about Shadow of Rome? There are some annoying missions, a few gladiatorial events that require speed and planning and some stealth missions are just frustrating, especially towards the end of the game. The game is challenging, but not impossible and the combat has a good feel to it. If you're looking for a good game with gladiatorial combat, look no further.