When I was in school in the mid Nineties, there were several rites of passage: getting to the tuck shop early to grab the best food; learning what really happened behind the bike sheds; and checking out the latest Scholastic book fair that, among other books, included entries in the Horrible Histories series. Created by ex-teacher and author Terry Deary with illustrator Martin Brown, the series dealt with historical time periods from the Stone Age right up to the present day and - as a kid - I loved them! From the moment my parents bought me Vicious Vikings, I was hooked, and over the years of my youth I collected the set, even going along to a meet-the-author session years later where, embarrassingly, I was the oldest non-parent there. But, reminiscing aside, when I saw that a videogame of the book Ruthless Romans had been created, I decided to delve back into my childhood and learn some facts about that important time period.

The concept of Horrible Histories has expanded in recent years to include a cartoon, a TV series and there are even plans for a theme park, but the latest idea is to bring the qualities of the books into the world of the videogame. Ruthless Romans is the first in the series, a learning adventure built in a mixture of 2D and 3D and based upon the companion book. In the game you play as Rassimus, a captured peasant whose aim is to break free of the shackles of slavery by fighting his way through gladiator school and earning his freedom in the Coliseum.

Built around a 3D third person map screen in the streets of Rome, Ruthless Romans sees Rassimus tackling a variety of mini-games to earn his freedom, roaming the streets looking for people to speak to, books to read and quests to complete to fulfil his task. The 3D cel-shaded world makes up the majority of the game, with the Wiimote held in its traditional position to guide Rassimus around the environment. The d-pad is used to move around and the A button to perform actions onscreen. There are also four options onscreen that give you access to your diary to track the progress of your quests, a bag containing the key items you pick up, a school report showing your progress in gladiatorial school, and a birds-eye map showing the entire environment, not all of which you can access at the beginning.

As the plot progresses, different areas of the game world are unlocked and more of the story is revealed, told by basic but pleasing animated storyboards and humorous narration from the author himself. The map controls are well put together and it's only on certain mini-games that controller flaws appear - but more on that later. The birds-eye map is the weakest element of the navigation, as it is not overly clear where you are in relation to where you want to be. At the start of the game you are prompted by a green dotted trail of where to go, but when this ends it can be difficult at times to know where you are headed.

To become a gladiator, you have to go through eight steps, built around eight different fighting styles. To progress through each stage, there are three tasks to complete and then a final fight. The three tasks are the same style each time: a mini-game based upon the gladiatorial style of the current gladiator (whether that is throwing a javelin at targets or using a shield to protect yourself); a ten-question quiz (which is a nod to the book series), with the questions taken from information in books that are scattered around the environment to read and learn from; and a shooting gallery style mission with an increasing amount of targets to hit, creatures to capture and buttons to press as you progress. To complete each task you have to score at least a certain number of points, which increases through the eight stages.

The shooting gallery is my favourite because of the simplicity of the gameplay and the challenge in the later stages, while the gladiatorial challenges are probably the most frustrating due to the controls being challenging at times. The movements you make do not always translate correctly, although this is usually down to how you are holding the Wiimote; once you've worked that out, you've cracked it. Being older than the target audience, I also tried to do the quizzes without swotting up first and usually came unstuck - but with only a bank of around fifteen to twenty questions per quiz and the correct solution given to a question even if you get it wrong, within three goes you have usually scored enough points to continue.

Once these have been completed, you get to fight the gladiatorial battle, which is a simplified 2D Street Fighter. Both you and your opponent have a health bar and you take it in turns to pick one of three scoring methods: buttons (press a combination of four buttons, scoring ten points if you press them correctly), movements (perform certain movements with the Wiimote, again the most frustrating and to be avoided) or tracing (trace an object using the Wiimote, quite forgiving with inaccuracies). The loser of these contests gets the difference between the winner's score knocked from his health bar and the first to run out of health loses, but there are no penalties or limits to the number of retries so it's not a big deal if you don't emerge triumphant at first.

Once you've beaten the gladiator, it's back to the school to complete the next set of tasks, which go up in difficulty, with the final two surprisingly tricky for the target audience. Completing these tasks requires a lot of running around though and this is where the game falls down; it gets quite repetitive when you have to complete three tasks that are, to all intents and purposes, identical each time while also having to run a fair distance between the school and the coliseum just to play a mini-game. Throw in a very linear feel to the game, with characters and animals blocking pathways that would make the game map wider and only a small subplot to distract you from school, which you have to complete eventually to progress anyway, and this aspect of the game is disappointing. After the third gladiator lesson you do go off on another mission - a refreshing change - but it's just more mini-games and then soon you're back to the rigidity of lessons.

The mini-games that make up the skill of the game have, as you might expect, been seen on the Wii before, including the shooting gallery, memory games, matching cards and so on. With that said, there are several ingenious and more unusual mini-games, including one where you have to swing the Wiimote depending on the whereabouts of an animal - whether it's flying, walking or scurrying about, you can't actually see anything but a black screen and must rely upon your ears. This inspiration continues with allowing up to three other players with Wiimotes to join in with the single player game by competing in the mini-games against the main player to see who gets the higher score, meaning that friends can drop in and out of the game as they wish.

Graphically, Ruthless Romans gets a big thumbs up, as it captures the feel of the Horrible Histories books perfectly, with the 3D and 2D illustrations being very reminiscent of book illustrator Martin Brown's drawings. The 3D map is a pleasant cel-shaded affair that again matches the books' style, with lots of detail. Though not graphically incredible or realistic, this does make give the feeling of the book come to life and this presentation flows into the mini-games. There are also some nice little touches, such as a countdown timer displaying Roman numerals and, of course, the humour from the books making it all the more entertaining.

At key points in the game, the plot is revealed through storyboards that are nicely, if a little simply, animated and Terry Deary's humorous narration really enhances them. The sound overall is unobtrusive yet lends atmosphere to the proceedings, even if there's nothing outstanding. The game is full of sound effects though, which come into play in certain mini-games.

It took me about four hours to complete the adventure mode of Ruthless Romans, although it may take longer for the target audience of pre-teens to early teens, especially if they swot up on all the reading matter in the game and don't try to bluff their way through like I did. The game isn't a complete walkover though, as there's some challenge to the later tasks, but there isn't a lot of replayability to the game beyond classing it as 'homework' to get some extra gaming time in! Records of scores are kept in a table though, so there is the opportunity for beating high scores and you can play all mini-games from the adventure mode in the game hut.

Outside of the single player there are several multiplayer options available from the main menu. Conquest is a board game-style challenge where players attempt to take over countries in the Roman Empire while preventing their opponents from doing the same. A game for two to four players, each turn gives either a reward or penalty for the player, or a mini-game to play, with the winner of that game winning the selected country. The first person to conquer the empire, wins. Up to four players can also play the mini-game challenge where the structure of the adventure mode is discarded and it's mini-games all the way, with the player who wins the most of the chosen mini-games declared is the victor. You can customise this by choosing a character avatar and typing in a name, but sadly there are no Mii options. Finally, two players can also tackle the gladiator battles outside of the story mode, and it's these extra modes that will add a few more hours onto the gameplay.

Horrible Histories: Ruthless Romans is filled with important (and child-pleasingly gory) facts and does to a certain extent succeed in making learning fun. The mini-games are enjoyable overall and well put together, with only some suffering from irritating controls and the game is well aimed at young children, forming almost a love letter to the fans of the original books, although it is quite text-heavy, so don't expect your children to forsake Mario and Zelda for it altogether. It's not perfect - the wandering around can be tedious and the progress is linear and at times repetitive - but as a translation of the book though, Ruthless Romans is a charming affair, one that combines learning and gaming with far more success than usually results from such edutainment titles.

Reviewed by Philip Lickley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).