Impressive Hack-and-Slash Slays Competition

If you've seen the movie 'Gladiator' and thought to yourself "I'd like to do that, if it wasn't for the whole fight-to-the-death thing." then you will like this game. If you're a fan of hack and slash adventures from Zelda to Morrowind and Oblivion, you'll like this game. Yes, it's really a 3D Game Maker arena combat game, which is impressive in its own right. The gameplay is straightforward and smooth - choose your weapon and armor, the difficulty of your opponent, then open the arena door and hack and slash your opponent to bits. When you're victorious you gain rank, which will allow you to unlock the other sets of armor and weapons. You're allowed to select from opponents that are 1-3 ranks higher than your own, each of which tends to have a different fighting strategy. The higher level opponents tend to back themselves into a corner and defend endlessly, which makes it annoying but very simple to defeat them with persistent attacking. The lower level opponents will actually attack you more frequently, often while you are trying to attack, which makes for harder combat even though the lower level opponent hits less hard. If the higher level opponent were to attack more frequently and retreat less it would certainly be a more difficult fight to win.

Enemy A.I. aside, this game offers everything you want to the hack and slash fan - a weapon in one hand, shield in the other, and something to whack at. Hail Caesar!