A dining in hell.
The Bad: The game exists; Horrible graphics; Boring and tedious gameplay; boring voice acting and dialogue; Bad story that derails to much from the movie.
A new dump enters the toilet in the form of 300: The Game from Warner Bros Interactive and Collision Studios, and this should have just been flushed. The game will take players through a few environments, and pit you against some of the most boring foes, over and over again. This game does so many things wrong and an extremely few things right, in fact I wouldn't even say things are done right, but that they were somewhat getting an idea to being onto doing something cool, or at least interesting. Based on an awesome movie, that was based on an awesome graphic novel, that was based on the famous historical event of the brave last stand of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, 300: The Game had some potential to be pretty cool. Potential, something that is seen in many licensed movie or comic based games, is really about as much this game has going for it, and it doesn't at all live up to any of it.
The story of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans is an epic and great tale of a group of men who gave their life for what they believed, by fighting against the Infamous Persian King Xerxes, and his large and powerful army. The game loosely follows the events that actually took place and barely follows anything seen in the movie or graphic novel and starts with a battle at Thermopylae or otherwise known as "The Hot Gates" and then takes you back to before the epic battle to give better explanation as to what is happening. But the game tells the tale in a boring fashion as some of it doesn't stay true to any of the source material, and puts players through stupid situations that not only don't make any sense, but just aren't fun. The story takes a weird turn at some points that has you jumping on Persian naval ships, then fighting your way to Poseidon's temple to do something for whatever reason I do not know. Nothing that takes place during the game though feels as epic as it should, and the game's story ends up feeling very boring and unimportant, basically being a disgraceful slap to the faces or all the Spartans that gave their lives on that day. The only redeeming thing would have to be the graphic novel cutscenes that take place between missions to serve to explain the story to all that is taking place. These are handeled quite well and are enjoyable to watch, but that enjoyment ends soon as the cut-scenes end and is replaced by the actual game to do the rest of the telling, then it becomes a reason to stop playing and go outside instead.
The gameplay of 300 is handled as a "3rd person Hack and Slash" style of game that seems to feel like it just wants to wish to be something that can be seen as a game trying to be God Of War, but instead falls flat on it's face due to bad gameplay and glitch filled levels. With a fixed camera, you control King Leonidas as he dispatches foes with his sword, his shield, which can be used to attack or block with, and a spear which can be used as melee and be swung, or as a projectile and be thrown, and fights alongside his men, which instead of being 300 Spartans like the name of the game implies, really only ends up mostly being one to two other men with then more standing off on the edge of the map, just standing around. You will dispatch foes through a few but boring ways as you make your way through different and even recycled environments (As most of the historical battle only took place at one spot), once in while climbing up walls to get to higher places or solving extremely boring and simple puzzles, and even sneaking. You are given two main modes of fighting, sword and shield, or spear and shield, and a third where you can dual wield two swords to slay your foes with, each mode allows for fast and slow but heavy attacks which are a bit stronger. Your also given magic upgrades too that do things like refill health or slow down time, automatically dodge moves for counters, and one that can make your attacks more deadly, all very true to how the Spartans fought (That's sarcasm by the way). Some foes will require you to defeat them in certain ways and in only those ways. This turns out making the game very tedious and boring though.
Enemies with shields or armor will require that you use your spear to break through them so that they can be vulnerable to your attacks and actually allow you to deal damage upon them. From there it would be beneficial to use your swords as they deal more damage to the actual body, though you would think it wouldn't make that big of a difference, but it does as the spear is not that useful for taking away actual health. Some enemies require that you beat them using a special finishing move though, which is really annoying as some of these guys have no armor and you can slash them over and over yet they will not lose any health, because they can only be finished off using that certain move or magic ability. The finishing moves are somewhat cool, the first time you do them that is, but they quickly wear down after that. There's more moves you can get for your three styles of fighting, that can all be unlocked and upgraded by defeating enemies which will then give you experience in the form of currency called "Kleos" which you can spend on gaining these abilities and upgrades or improving your characters armor and such. Still though, this doesn't make the game any more fun, aside from the ability to dispatch enemies a little quicker. The enemies are really boring to face.
You'll start by facing lame, annoying Persian slaves in diapers, to facing armored soldiers known as the immortals, to facing bosses, and whatever else, all the enemies feel the same though no matter what. They will come at you in small groups of like five men to attack and have just general slashes mainly to attack, with some using arrows, some of them being poisonous, which will slow your character down considerably, which is really annoying because the game also has a really bad time keeping up with itself and tends to slow down a lot, mainly when numerous enemies are on-screen. If your hurt, your health bar will suffer and you will met death if it goes down, and there's also a magic bar and this will only deplete when you use magic. Action is slightly changed at certain points in the game where Leonidas calls his men to perform a Phalynx, which when this happens, the Spartans will line up together, side by side and defensively push there way through on-coming enemies to get from one point to the other, by stabbing through your opponents shields and then them, with two different attacks. Your health bar changes to a command bar that basically is the same thing, but it goes down over time, adding a sense of urgency to get through these parts, you can also decide to block which will cause all the Spartans to raise their shields and defend against attacks. While in this gameplay mode or the standard running around, the screen will sometimes get dark indicating a barrage of arrows is coming as it blocks out the sun, which will then cause you to either be hit and killed or to tuck down and hold your shield up as protection. These moments happen far too often, and also prove to be annoying, though it was a neat idea, and besides that there's also some short stealth sequences that will have you sneaking up on your enemies performing some cool stealth kills, and if your discovered, then you just have to fight your way out, but these moments are also quite boring.
This game while ugly in the gameplay department is also ugly visually. The graphics look like something that belongs on the original PlayStation. Characters are poorly rendered, and look blocky. They all have very stiff animations when they move too, with Leonidas moving like he couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. The environments also don't look all that great, containing not much detail or variety to them. One of only redeeming qualities are in the amount of blood there is, which doesn't look that great though, but can look cool at times when things like decapitations happen. The other redeeming thing is seen during the graphic novel like cut-scenes seen in between levels, all of which is nicely stylized.
Sound wise also isn't too great. Characters sound ok, but they just don't set the epic feel as heard in the movie and most of the dialogue isn't too great either. The game does however have the narrator from the movie to narrate the graphic novel like cut-scenes, but that's where the good ends. The soundtrack is ok at times, but is seriously annoying as it seems it is usually the same song stuck on loop the entire time through each level. Background sounds are included to make it sound like battles are being waged around you. This sounds cool at first but ultimately becomes annoying when you see that your other men are just standing around.
As far as the replay value goes for this game, there is some in the form of unlockables, of course you have to be able to look past all the many errors in this game, which seems to be the game itself. There are things like concept art, extra movies to show the making of, or the graphic novel cut-scenes. Some of this can be unlocked by progressing through the game, with the other stuff being unlocked by finding hidden accolades scattered throughout the levels. Aside from that, there is nothing else, unless you like the game that much to keep playing, which is highly doubtful that anyone would. This games replay value is as low as its actual play value, which is basically none, as there is no value in this game.
Even with all the unlockables, and cool graphic novel cut-scenes, this game is not worth anyone's time, not even as a rental. It's not even worth being looked at, or even reading about it. One's best bet is to avoid this game at all costs and find something else to play. This is one of the worst games I have ever come across, and it's sad because it had so much potential. 300: The Game is a horrible disaster that should be buried with the remainders of the long lost E.T. game for The Atari 2600.
1 out of 10