Loki is the new game from Cyanide Studio, the team behind the humorous Chaos League. I've been looking forward to playing Loki for a while now, as ever since the first Diablo way back in 1996 I've always liked action RPGs, or hack 'n' slash games as they are sometimes known. I knew there was nothing particularly original about Loki, but a game doesn't need to be original and packed with new features to be high quality. Cyanide Studio obviously believe that too, but unfortunately, although very good, the game is not as high quality as I'd hoped.

The story is very straightforward; an Egyptian god of chaos called Seth has somehow come back to life and now wants to kill everything good - very original! Unsurprisingly it's down to you to stop him. To combat Seth you start the game by choosing one of four different heroes or heroines - the Norse barbarian, the Aztec shaman, the Egyptian sorcerer or the Greek fighter. Each of these characters, as I'm sure you can guess, has their own advantages and disadvantages - the Aztec shaman is a good magic user but physically weak, while the Norseman is brutal in hand-to-hand combat but not very intelligent and so suffers on the magic side. What you might not guess however is that each has his or her own mythology too. This influences the skills and special abilities available to each character, their starting region and initial quests (which nearly always involve killing someone), as well as having an impact on the overall story. Whilst Greek mythology follows the lives of many larger-than-life heroes, heroines and gods, Egyptian mythology uses gods and mythical creatures in an attempt to explain the world the Egyptians live in. The less widely known Aztec mythology centres on nature and supernatural creatures, but unlike the rest, the Norse mythology is all about doomsday, the end of the world and the apocalyptic battle between the gods at Ragnarok.

Irrespective of which hero/heroine you choose, you will have to play through each of the four mythologies before you can battle Seth. You can play these mythologies in any order you wish, with the difficulty of each changing depending on your progress.

Obviously you can't have a game involving mythology without some mythological and fantastical creatures. The Minotaur is there (the half man, half bull from Greek mythology - although I never think you'd imagine him looking like he does), the serpentine Medusa, the living dead, skeletons, spiders, mummies, harpies (small blue women with wings and claws) and Fenrir, the massive wolf from Norse mythology. There sure are a lot of them and these are only a tiny few! To help you remember (or boast about) all the types of foes you've killed, there is a Bestiary section in the main menu that lists them all. It would be great if some description of enemies were given though, rather than just a 3D image, especially the main mythological characters.

It's not just the enemies that take advantage of this combining of different mythologies either; a lot of the NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) who inhabit towns are also taken from legends, such as Achilles the Greek hero and Thor the Norse God of Thunder. Many of these notable characters give you quests but, while they are always present, they are never seen fighting and can only be talked to at certain times. However, it's fun to learn the basics of each mythology and be able to identify characters you know. With mythology fans pleased, Loki now tackles history fans by including some historical events to go through, like the battle of Troy and the fall of the Aztec empire. Most are changed to suit the hack 'n' slash genre - like the way you take on the whole of the city of Troy by yourself - but it's still nice to have some link to reality, as the story of killing the god Seth is clearly not realistic.

However, it's difficult to actually know what the story is about until the later stages of the game, as many of the starting quests seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with Seth. Each hero and heroine lives in a different part of the world initially and they each tell a different part of the story. This works quite well and conveys the image that the whole world is at risk, not just one place. Most of the major elements of the story are told through the very impressive cut scenes.

The gameplay in Loki is simple and intuitive. You click the mouse anywhere on the ground to move your character to that position and hold to continue moving in the mouse cursor's direction. When enemies appear, and it won't be long before they do, simply place the mouse cursor over them and click to attack - easy! Holding down the mouse button is needed for continued attacks in order to dispatch the tougher enemies though. The camera is always centralised on the hero or heroine and using the keyboard it can be rotated a full 360 degrees, zoomed in to get a closer view of him or her and zoomed out for an isometric view. It's all very similar to every other hack 'n' slash game ever made, from Neverwinter Nights to the legendary Diablo. In fact, there are even shrines dotted around the world just like in Diablo II, which give you temporary bonuses when touched, such as a health refill or extra experience for killing enemies. This experience is used to improve the level, strength, dexterity and so on, of your character so that you can survive tougher bouts.

In most action RPGs, increasing a level earns you a skill point to spend on spells or special abilities. However, Loki does things a little differently; here there are two separate counters - one for experience used to gain levels and the other for 'faith'. Your faith consumes 25% of experience gained from killing enemies and when it's full, you earn a skill point. Each character has three categories of skills to choose from, with each category relating to a different god. For example, the Greek character has Athena for general skills, Artemis for skills allowing more powerful ranged attacks and Ares for skills allowing magical traps to be set. When you have earned a skill point, you can only place it in the category of the god that you are currently worshipping, and while you can only worship one god at a time, you can easily change your god at an altar. You can also abandon worship of any gods, thus gaining no faith but more experience from kills in order to level up faster. It's only a small change to the basic formula, but it fits in well with the gods and mythology theme.

It's disappointing that the in-game graphics don't show the same quality. They are perfectly adequate but they don't really stand out amongst other modern games, looking a bit too angular and blocky at times. The graphical effects for spells and magic skills are not as over-the-top as they should be either. Despite this, the characters and enemies are detailed, as are the landscape and scenery items such as trees. All the characters are animated well, with smooth movement, and there are some excellent character models, such as Medusa and Zeus. Everything, including your character, leaves shadows on the ground. Any overhangs like trees or cliffs that would obscure your character become transparent, so it is rare to lose sight of him or her. There is a day/night cycle too, which is a nice aesthetic touch. It would be an improvement to have an in-game clock and maybe include actions that could only be performed at night though. There are a few clipping problems (a monster sticking through a tree, for example) but these are rare.

The sound is only reasonable as well. The music is good enough, but the sound effects are not so good. You don't hear swords clash; when enemies are hit, blood spurts out but any yelps or grunts don't really convey any sense of impact or pain. Also, some spells, especially those used against you, just sound weird. For example, the Amazon lancers have a life drain spell that sounds like an explosion when activated. The sound could have been better in the towns too; there is no mumble of city-dwellers' conversations and no calls as birds fly overhead. The voice acting of quest givers is very well done, however, while gods (yes, they do appear in human form - albeit fairly tall humans) have suitably echoing voices.

Playing as a Greek fighter I lovingly named Lianus, the first bout saw me in a gladiatorial ring - wearing only a loosely fitting dress! There is no equipment except a training sword in the inventory at first - no shield or armour. Luckily, the gladiators prove no real danger, so this acts as quite a nice little introduction to the game's mechanics. Enemies do become a danger though, so you need to upgrade from that dress into something a little bit more protective. There are thousands of items on offer, many being available only to particular classes. As you would expect monsters, Amazonians and other enemies often drop items - usually non-magical white items for your more common foes, such as Trojan defenders, and magical blue items left for bosses and tougher nasties. Light blue items have only one or two magical properties, whereas dark blues have many such properties, so by the colour of an item's name you can clearly see whether it's worth taking. Collected items go into your inventory but there's no complex inventory management here, which is a useful feature, as it keeps the fast-paced action going. The inventory is divided into four sections to make finding items of a type quicker; Weapons and Armour are self-explanatory; Rings, potions and other trinkets go in the Objects section and Kiosk is an interesting feature that is used to sell unwanted stuff.

Whenever you pick up an item (enemies thoughtfully drop all their items in sparkly bags) it automatically goes into the correct section of your inventory. If you are sure you won't use an item or can't use it but just picked it up for the gold, you can right-click it from its section and it'll shoot off to the Kiosk. If you later find yourself overburdened then you can drop some of the stuff you know is pretty useless from the Kiosk. Once back in a town, talk to a merchant and click "Sell everything" in the Kiosk section of your inventory and everything is sold. No repetitive transfer of items is needed to sell items individually - just one simple click followed by a flood of money. If you accidentally put something in the Kiosk that you want to keep, just right-click it again to put it back in the proper section.

Equipping items is simple too; just scroll down your inventory and place the mouse cursor over an item to see its properties. Item stats range from physical damage to fire resistance and required level (on the hardest difficulty the maximum level is a god-like 200!) to defence rating. A helm I found had a 6% resistance to stupidity - unfortunately it only worked in the game though! Nearly all items have their own appearance, so you can make sure your character looks good as he or she bashes heads. Once you've found the perfect implement of death, you simply left-click to equip it; you can even have two weapon set-ups to quickly switch between ranged and melee. Sadly though, there is no way to dual-wield.

While I'm on the subject of items, I should mention the ability to re-forge them with stronger metals, found from deposits in certain areas or gained from recycling weapons that you no longer want. It's a great idea, but I found it a bit too complex. Blacksmiths in towns are needed to re-forge weapons and they can also disassemble weapons into separate parts, allowing you to piece together new weapons. This can be used to transfer some of the magic properties from one weapon to another and you can do the same thing with magical runes, but again it's all a bit complex and hard to do.

The two things that most frustrate me about the game are the high difficulty and occasionally unresponsive controls. Sometimes the stand ground attack button doesn't keep the character from moving and if you click and hold the mouse button too soon after the previous attack, your character doesn't respond, just standing there being hit and not attacking.

At the start of the game only the easiest difficulty of the three is available. I thought that this was a bit annoying, as I don't like playing games on really easy settings, but I was completely wrong. The areas get hard - fast! Health regenerates after a period of inactivity, which is a godsend! Taking down one or two baddies at a time is child's play, but when surrounded by a pack of wolves, the odd snake and under fire from archers, things become ugly. You'll soon figure out some basic tactics, but constantly dying and restarting at the beginning of the area can become tedious. I had to learn the art of retreat before I could take on the large groups and survive.

Loki will last you ages. As well as the large campaign consisting of over fifty quests and five distinct zones, there are four different heroes and heroines to play as, resulting in a different game ending depending on the order you play them in. Each area is randomly generated, as is standard for hack 'n' slash games, while the thousands of skills and items on offer keep your characters looking fresh, which does its best to make up for the lack of character customisation. There are some really nice multiplayer modes too, including a two to six player co-op mode through the main campaign and Arena challenges.

Loki is an enjoyable and addictive game. It doesn't add much to the genre - but does it need to? The average graphics and a few other minor problems deny this game a really high score, which is a shame, as I really had fun playing it. Loki is very much like Neverwinter Nights 2 crossed with Diablo II, with a dash of gods and mythology thrown in for good measure. If you liked these games, or other hack 'n' slash action RPGs, then you should find Loki an enjoyable experience. It's also definitely worth considering even if you haven't played any games in the genre before, as it makes for a fine introduction.

Reviewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).