It's common gamer knowlege that while good games don't necessarily spawn generic clones, blockbuster ones always do. In the past few years the gaming market has been wrought with countless God of War style games. Some of those games have been great, and some of those games have fallen short of their mark. And while all of these games feature the same basic combat system which is so iconic to GOW, they nearly all have a seperate identies thanks to their different storylines and environments.
I say "nearly" because one of these clones is not like the others. It is produced by Gameloft, a developer notorious for making game clones of EVERYTHING. Hero of Sparta is so generic, it's unbelievable. The title sounds like GOW. The setting is the same as GOW: unstoppable badass Spartan general defies the Gods at every turn. The weapons are the same. The enmies are the same. It's incredible to me that Gameloft got away with what they did, which is essentially God of War with terrible graphics.
Despite this, and despite non-repurposed everything about it's design, Hero of Sparta is great fun because it never takes itself too seriously. And so when it spawned a sequal, Hero of Sparta 2 HD (saying that name aloud feels like chunks of wet clay are falling out of my mouth), I was a little excited for better graphics and new gameplay.
Unfortunatly, the graphics in this game are ATROCIOUS. The voice acting is terrible, and that would be one thing, but since the character models don't have animated faces, they don't open their mouths during the dialogue. So whenever there's a conversation everybody just kinda bobs their heads around and waves their arms and you have to match it up with a horrible voice over. The gods are animated just like everything else and look ridiculous, except they're huge and occasionaly cause the graphics to take a shit all over the screen. Let me just say this right now; THERE IS NO COLLISION DETECTION SYSTEM IN THIS GAME. You are just as likely to go through an enemy's torso as is your sword. And the tutorial popups are a nightmare. There's no way to turn them off, and they won't go away by just tapping the screen. I actually don't know how you make them go away but I think that you have to perform whatever it is each tutorial is explaining how to do. This is fucking unbelivably retarded and frustrating thanks to the fact that the control response is as fast as a funeral march. Normally that flaw dosen't matter since it's a hack and slash, but when a game stops and asks you to perform exactly what it wants before letting you take control again, PRECISION COUNTS MOTHERFUCKER.
What really pisses me off at this point is how Gameloft marketed this game. First off, high definition is WHOLE different animal than graphics. And while this game is in HD, the graphics are still shit. And if you like your shitty graphics bright and well defined, then that's fine. But I don't see why Gameloft couldn't have stepped it up with the graphics. Certainly one of the best things about the iPhone 4 iPad is that they both can run some pretty impressive graphics, why market something as HD if you don't even try to make it actually look better? But this is Gameloft we're talking about here, so I'll move on.
All that aside, Hero of Sparta 2 HD is still an addictive and fun game. All the addictive gameplay that was there in the first game is here now. And just like before, the fact that this game can be played so well makes the graphical flaws seem less of a problem. It's like every Guitar Hero game ever made in the sense that the fun of the game is independant of the visuals.
If you liked the first one, you'll like the second one as much, if not more. Just don't be fooled by the "HD" in the name, because the net result isn't that impressive. If you've never played a God of War title, I recommened you do so before playing this one otherwise you problably won't be able to look past the stupid and enjoy the fun that is there to be had.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad, cuz I'm a douche
