PSP World

Rage of the Gladiator: Promising or Epic Fail?

We just can't make up our minds about Gostfire Games' latest Wii project, Rage of the Gladiator. On the one hand, it seems to offer exactly what we were asking for in a recent column on Xboxist: total motion control gladiator action. In that article, we envisioned a setup using Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal camera, in which the player could use household items to fend off enemies in bloody hand-to-hand combat.

This is almost as good, or at least it has the potential to be. Insted of human opponents, players will now do battle with an array of mythical beasts, from centaurs to magicians to Djinn.

According to the developer, this WiiWare release is a fantasy fighting game. You control a gladiator, fighting for your life in an arena. Armed with your magical warhammer and a trusty shield, you must defeat fantastic bosses including a Chimera, Beholder, and a Dragon. The game is set in first-person perspective.

"Rage of the Gladiator is a series of epic boss-battles," said Ed Roman, CEO of Ghostfire Games. "There are no 'fodder' enemies - its all bosses, which we find to be the most fun part of games!"

As usual with the Wii, however, problems started to emerge when we caught a glimpse of the game's graphics. Somewhere between a bad 1970s fantasy movie and early 3D PC games like Rise of the Triads, this gladiator sim certainly isn't pretty. We just hope in can manage to be fun, camp and ridiculous all at the same time. If so, Ghostfire could have a winner on their hands (and a mandate to create an Xbox Live game for Natal!)