Price: £39.99 Players: 1-2 Widescreen: No NTSC 60Hz: No DTS sound: No Contenders - Ready! Gladiators - Ready! No, thankfully it's nothing to do with the '80s TV show. The idea here, in what looks like it's meant to be some kind of homage to the Russell Crowe movie is that the year is 106 AD and the Roman Empire is in decline, with you as the only saviour up against great opposition. Or rather, you have to defeat wave upon wave of baddies, hacking and slashing them to the ground. Yes, it's that deep(!) You enter the first arena, kill a baddie or three individually, move on to the next one, do the same, move on again, then you'll get two at once - with the option to strike each one individually at the press of a button. And as for the end-of-level style bit, fighting ten blokes off at once is no challenge, it's just tedious!

This game is linear, too easy, too much sensation over substance, i.e. there's lots of background chanting from the crowd but no excitement to be gained. You have to go on the set path and there's no way round that. A lot of button-mashing will soon kill the other gladiators off. Sometimes they'll consistently block your "slash, slash... slash" moves, that is two quick slashes followed by one half-a-second later, but just stand in front of them doing nothing for a second, they'll drop their guard and you can simply gash them again! It used to be that a lot of new games contained top-notch graphics, but were severely lacking in gameplay and excitement. This also misses out the graphics, as shown by the poor camera angles such as when my gladiator got stuck behind a block and a pillar and I had to fight 'blind'! Yes, just keep going from one arena to the next until you get too outnumbered by bigger baddies, then get bored and switch off. And to cap it all, your gladiator is voiced by Shane Richie, aka Eastenders' Alfie Moon, in his "ITV Weather" sponsorship trail-monotone. Just look at the picture on the cover and imagine him saying, "Oi! Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance! No!"

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2004.