Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance

Eat. Sleep. Litter the ground with your enemies. Wear a loincloth.

Definitely not for the weak-kneed, this testosterone-laden splatter fest gets its jollies from bucketloads of blood and gory execution cut-scenes. Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance hurls you into the sandals of Invictus Thrax, a slave-turned-professional-arena-fighter who is recruited by kiddie gods Romulus and Remus to settle an old score with an emperor who?s a couple sandwiches short of a picnic. It has some slick production values, and Acclaim goes all out on dreamy visuals, gorgeously detailed architecture, a Vikingly heroic score, and juicy sound effects, but skimps on any kind of depth and rewarding gameplay.

Unless the gratuitous decapitations, dismemberments, and full-on disembowelments alone raisin your nut bran, all Gladiator offers is a mentally vacuous button mashing romp where you slaughter interminably repeating waves of skeletons, titan creeps, and one-eyed mutant ogres with occasional jug-smashing and lever-pulling breaks thrown in for good measure. No, every game does not have to be the equivalent of Dostoyevsky, but implementation of some rudimentary mechanics, such as more save points, a better combo system, and some sort of camera control, would have rendered the mind-numbing repetition more tolerable; at least weapon upgrades and sorcery help end fights faster. Consider yourself warned, but if you decide to flip for Gladiator, a word of advice for ya: After a couple hours, you may want to grab the nearest pencil and paper and do some trigonometry to remind yourself that you still have a brain in your skull.

Also on the PlayStation 2

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