Shodow of Rome.
This game can be discribed using one word, gory.
It is one of the best gladiator games ever created. and I will tell you why.
This game is good becuase it combines stealth, with fighting, with thinking.
There is an exelent story in Shodow of Rome. It is set in the waning days of the Roman republic where Julius Caesar is murdered. In this game you play as 2 characters. Agrippa, a big blury centurion gone gladiator with an oddly high voice, and Octavianus, who is a thin wiry boy and the late Caesars nephew.
You start off playing as Agrippa in his first match in the arena. This is where you learn the controls etc, and learn how to fight. Now in this chapter of the story you have no idea what the hell is going on, you have no idea why you are a gladiator, no idea what you are meant to do, you are just chucked in the arena to fight. My first impression of the game was a stupid, no story game which was a waste of space, but then I played it.
One of the first thing I noticed about the game were the controls, there was no button mashing like you can get in games like Spartan total warrior, and God of War, it was all combo based. You make the combos by pressing 2 buttons at difrent times, the x and s buttons. The X buttons are your main weapons, aka gladius, mace, morning star, whicle your s button handles your seconday weapon, like shield, dasgger, and torch. Now you can press any combo of these buttons that you want and Agrippa will preform every move, there is no specific moves that you are told becuase it is more fun to find out about them yourself. And the amount of stuff that you can do to your fellow gladiators is amazing, you can break their arms, slice off their heads, and cut their torsos in two.
Also it is not just the weapons controls that are good, but the movement controls are exellent, and react to how hard you press the analog stick.
As Agrippa you progress through miltiple arenas, and have a lot of fights. But they are not just the last man standing wins routine, they can be complex things that can include, freeing hostages, tortuing enemys, and killing a specific target, like a statue that enemys are defending. Also as Agrippa you have some parts where you face off in the Circus maximus, on chariots where you can kill enemys there as well.
Now moving on to Octavianus. His stealth sequances are not as breath taking and bloody as Agrippas battles, but are very vital to the story. As Octavianus you must sneak around the senate, trying to find the people who assasinated Caesar, while not being discovered. As you go you collect coins and can use them to buy things for your little house near the Roman forum. You are not able to kill as Octavianus, but you are able to strangle guards into uncontiousnuss or knock them out cold with wine jars etc, but the stealth sequances are there to give you a break from the killing in the arena.
Now the lenth of this game is good, and a dedicated person should be able to play it through on easy in about 10-12 hours. But if you are like me who likes to do everything there and collect every unlockable then this game will take you 20 hours+.
This is a game that you never want to stop playing, and I recommend it to anyone who has a Ps2, even more if you are a history geek like me. The only reason why I did not rate this game a 5, was becuase it is not historically accurate, now I know this will not mean much to you guys who hate history and think it is boring, but to me it was the only let down of the game.
So I rate this 4 and a half, and recommend it to all, for it is one of the best games the Ps2 has ever seen.
