Hero of Sparta is a nice little God of War style beat-em-up with some fun boss battles and a hell of a lot of minions.
You play as a 'Hero of Sparta' (never really cought the name) who likes to kill minatours, giant scorpions, small scorpions (that are larger than usual), strange bat things and many more. The controls are fluent, I personally didn't use block once throughout the whole game... but you can. There are some cool special abilities for each weapon, some cool quick-time takedowns and there are some awesome boss battles throughout the whole 10 levels of the game, which go from around 15-30 minutes depending on how good you are and which level you're playing.
Upgrading health involves finding green crystals lying around in-game (which also replenishes you're health which is rather nice. Upgrading mana involves finding blue crystals lying around (which replenish mana). Upgrading weapons (which you find throughout the game) involves getting XP, which you obtain by killing stuff and doing quick-time combos.
FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS!
Mana is used whenever you do a special move, and is also used whenever you fire you're bow (which you obtain at the end of the 3rd/4th level), therefore you have unlimited arrows. Mana also replenishes itself extremely slowly.
NO MORE SPOILERS...
The boss battles are fun, although there isn't a lot of them, which is dissapointing. For the price they are giving this game away for these days, it's definately a solid purchase that you won't regret... just don't expect too much from it.
Review by minimme 30/1/2010.