2005 might just be the year of the gladiator - games plundering our ancient history for inspiration have been plentiful this year, but few of them capture the epic scale battles like Spartan: Total Warrior does.

Unlike games that break you in gently, Spartan throws you straight into the action as you enter a huge scale battle that is without doubt one of the most impressive opening levels I've ever played. You are a young and inexperienced Spartan warrior, one of thousands, charged with defending the sprawling city of Sparta against a seemingly unbeatable mass of Roman soldiers. As the king rallies his troops to battle with an inspiring speech, a strange booming voice echoes in your mind, declaring itself to be the voice of Ares, the Greek God of War. Ares promises to help you realise your true potential and change the outcome of history forever. And so as the invasion begins, you charge into battle with your comrades.

The battlefield is truly epic - the city of Sparta, like every location throughout the game, is beautifully rendered with detailed textures and intricate fixtures. The animation of every man, both allied and enemy, is also excellent, with realistic and smooth movement. As you and your troop follow your captain to battle, fireballs rain down around you, exploding and wiping out entire troops of your allies with a single hit. Bodies rain down all around you and craters are left in the ground - and you haven't even reached the enemy yet! Your first job is to take care of the mobile towers through which the Romans are pouring into the city. You must focus on the Centurion leader of the each tower, then guard a sapper running with a big bomb on his back, so he can make it to the tower. You light the bomb, then with a spectacular and fiery explosion, the towers are taken out, one by one.

While the first thing that strikes you about the game is the spectacular graphics and epic setting, the first thing that you'll notice about the gameplay is that the combat is somewhat limited. You have only two attack types - regular attack and charge, where you poise for attack and then launch into a group of troops, hitting several of them at once. There aren't any special combos to master, yet this doesn't make the gameplay any less enjoyable, thanks to a well thought-out combat system. When you block, you can also knock back an individual enemy or a group of enemies - and you'd better learn to block too, or you'll be dying a lot. With tougher enemies, a good strategy is to knock them back and then charge forward and swipe before they regain their balance. You can also execute a fatal kill on any enemy that has been knocked to the ground or use arrows, targeting a single enemy or firing a spread of five, especially effective with flame arrows, which can also be used to blow up explosive barrels to great effect.

Best of all are the power attacks - as you strike enemies, a circular meter builds up with energy and when it flashes you're ready for a very powerful move, which you can focus on one enemy or use on a whole group. Initially you have only a sword and shield, the power attack here allows you to either impale a single enemy and fling him away, or charge into a group, swinging your sword almost too fast to see - you do see the result though, as heads fly, blood spurts out of neck stumps and bodies stagger then topple to the ground. This is one bloody game, with excellent gore effects and lovely death animations! I never tired of pulling off the power moves and watching the body count rise - unlike most games, the bodies stay on the battlefield and it's quite awesome when the enemies finally stop coming in and you can look at the scene of carnage, with dozens of bodies littering the area. Equally impressive is the number of men on screen at once - in some scenes you'll have armies of fifty or more on each side charge into each other and clash, almost like a scene from The Lord Of The Rings or Troy. No matter how many enemies there are, there's never even a hint of slowdown and considering how polished the graphics are, this is a real feat of programming on the part of the developers.

As you progress through the opening level, you have a range of objectives to fill in various scenes - protecting the king in combat, letting allied troops in by pulling a lever to open a gate, guarding ballista emplacements against enemy attack and then firing them when the sappers have readied the ammo, pouring boiling oil on enemies below - the range of scripted objectives throughout each of the large levels is excellent and this keeps things feeling varied, despite the combat being essentially the same. You even face off against a massive bronze statue in this level, having to ensure that the ballistas take it down before it reaches you. Watching it topple back onto a crowd of fleeing Romans is most satisfying.

Once you've fended off the initial Roman attack, you take the fight to them, bringing companions Castor and Pollux right into the Roman camp, stealing a pair of mythical swords from under the enemy's nose, freeing some prisoners and there are even optional objectives of poisoning water supplies and destroying ballistas. It is here that you meet your other ally, Amazon warrior Electra, who aids your escape, which culminates with a massive battle where you must shoot hundreds of charging Romans with explosive ballistas while sappers prepare explosives to blow the bridge.

The story in Total Warrior takes you far beyond the borders of your city, to several other locations, such as the barbarian infested wastelands, where you end up protecting innocent villagers from this deadly scourge, and the ruined city of Troy, where you must battle your way deep underground to recover the spear of Achilles, which Ares has commanded you to obtain if you wish to gain final victory. Each new environment looks as lovely as the last and you really do feel like you're back in ancient times, even though the story doesn't attempt to be historically realistic; you get to fight the many-headed Hydra and the Minotaur, as well as facing off against two Roman leaders, one of whom uses powerful sorcery including raising an army of skeleton and zombie warriors, while the other has channelled Medusa's deadly gaze into a powerful weapon. The battlefield where the Medusa beam rains down and petrifies all men, on both sides, who are caught in the blast radius, is one of the most impressive sequences in the entire game.

Once you get hold of the dual swords, you get the other aspect of the combat - magic attacks. You build up your magic from the blue, glowing souls of your victims, which float towards you when you run past them. The magic attacks can again be used either on a single enemy or a group and the dual swords use the power of thunder to electrocute a large area of enemies or zap a single one - handy for particularly tough enemies and boss fights. The Medusa shield allows you to temporarily turn every enemy on screen to stone, while the Hammer of Beowulf knocks creates a massive shockwave that knocks every enemy to the ground, killing the weaker ones outright. Most useful of all though is the Spear of Achilles, which sets you aflame, then every enemy that you touch is set on fire and runs around screaming, while you hack your way through hordes of enemies, executing one power attack after another and beheading a couple of dozen troops within as many seconds. These magic attacks are the highlight of the combat system and they are both spectacular to watch and tremendous fun to use, while each of the four weapon sets vary in speed and power, meaning that certain weapons are ideal for certain situations or types of enemy.

Unfortunately, while the story is reasonable, the cut scenes are somewhat marred by some questionable voice acting - the Greeks have macho American accents, while the Romans are either laughable Cockneys or overdramatic Thespians, which makes you laugh for all the wrong reasons. Still, this is the only weak aspect of the sound - all of the effects are excellent, with the sounds of swords hitting armour all around you, meaty explosions, great noises for when you slash throats and cut flesh, and plenty of speech during levels, where people are screaming in pain, sounding battle cries or shouting instructions to you.

The music is outstanding - it's up there with Halo in fact. A mixture of haunting male voices, full orchestra and modern drum beats make for a refreshing soundtrack that's as epic as the game; it totally fits the action and the setting and at times has an Enigma vibe going with its grand themes, usage of choir-quality voices and powerful drum beats. Every new tune is a pleasure to listen to, whether they're fast-paced and grand or a little slower and more atmosphere building. In fact, the music is so good that I'd happily buy the soundtrack if it came out on CD and I'm listening to the title screen theme tune right now, thanks to my wireless headphones.

While the action is intense, satisfying and very addictive, it is sadly somewhat short-lived. This isn't a huge game and you will probably hack your way through it in around ten hours - you might enjoy replaying on a harder difficulty, although the Normal mode is pretty tough and there were plenty of times when I died repeatedly before scraping through a level with minimal health. There are handily placed shrines to pray at for limited health and magic replenishment, which are often a godsend when you've just made it through one tough battle and are about to enter the next. Also the action is repetitive, despite varied objectives and frequent changes in location. However, while some may find that the novelty wears off, the big scale battles and huge number of troops on both sides kept my interest throughout.

Plenty is done to keep things interesting though - halfway through the game you reach the Roman-occupied city of Athens, where you must protect Archimedes as he makes a speech to rally the people, by killing assassins before they can shoot or stab him. There are many objectives to complete in the huge city and a great number of missions to undertake, including additional objectives of burning out Roman houses and defacing posters of Emperor Tiberius with graffiti! There's something you weren't expecting!

One of the most incredibly frustrating missions in the entire game sees you escorting Archimedes to safety - I must have died over thirty times on this and it took me about an hour to finally complete. The problem was, to prevent Archimedes from getting killed you had to wade in with no concern for your health - protect yourself too much and Archimedes is soon killed, but just helping Archimedes sees you dying pretty fast. In the end I just scraped through with strategic usage of certain weapons and magic attacks, but I was ready to kick the TV screen in by the time I was done! Another level near the end of the game takes you into the Roman sewers and while this is different to most levels, the lack of big battles and stupid toxic gas vents throughout make it one of the least enjoyable levels. Still, it's probably the only weak level of the whole game and it does end with the awesome Minotaur battle, so it's not a big complaint.

To expand the lifespan a little more, there are a few chests on every level to find and open, which unlock Arena items and concept art, but they're not that hard to discover and the incentive to replay levels to get them all isn't high. The Arena mode itself sticks you into a variety of arenas against an endless onslaught of increasingly tough foes, if you really want to cripple your fingers! This is a nice addition to the game but again not something that's going to boost the lifespan very long. As well as outstanding and very professional animation throughout, I also take my hat off to the developers for creating long, sprawling levels without a single load time - the only loads are between levels and the gameplay is intense and long-lasting each time, so the load breaks never feel intrusive and actually give you a nice breather!

Spartan: Total Warrior is a spectacular and epic slash 'em up, which throws you into a huge conflict and never lets up for a minute. The combat is satisfying, the setting is grand and the amount of troops on screen is amazing - this is war on a scale rarely seen in games and it puts the likes of Dynasty Warriors to shame for its combination of sheer numbers and exceptional graphics, with an outstanding soundtrack that completes the atmosphere of this historical adventure. Although the combat is a little repetitive and the game finishes a sooner than I'd hoped, the constant change of location and varying objectives should keep you entertained and addicted until the end. Master Chief had better watch out - he's no longer the only Spartan in the gaming world that's nothing but warrior!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).