Gaming Target - Xbox: Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance

Written by Alex Fitzgerald on December 10, 2003

Full Review: Not to be confused with the Russell Crowe filmЕthat was actually good.

I'm usually good at introductions when it comes to my game reviews. Give me some Coke and some heavy metal, and I'll cook you up a paragraph that will examine human nature and the world and somehow find a way to transition right back into the piece of crap game I'm reviewing that week. I can't come up with an introduction for Gladiator though. Why? There is absolutely nothing to the game.

Gladiator gives us a very promising first level where you're faced with a constantly burgeoning amount of enemies to kill while all of Rome cheers around you, sending you through boring level after boring level of simple hack-and-slash gameplay.

Though the developers of Gladiator have tried to set up some kind of battle system within the context of the game, you can essentially get by with just mashing the buttons. While this is great for somebody who just wants to watch blood fly for hours on end, anybody with a higher IQ than the game's price tag will be bored as Evel Knievel in a knitting class.

The rest of the game doesn't help matters. The story is woefully dull, and is only made more so by the weak voice acting and storytelling. The graphics aren't bad, but the environments aren't imaginative enough to keep you going through the game. Same goes for the audio, which contains music and sound effects that do their job...but that are painfully standard.