I’m a classics geek. I admit it. I’m always picking up books written by ancient greeks and romans to add to my library. I’ve got quite a collection – Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato, Pliny, Cicero, Suetonius, Ovid, Homer, Virgil, et cetera. So, when ever I see a video game set in my favorite historical period, I have to pick it up.
Rise of the Argonauts was described to me as being somewhere between God of War (which were great games!) and Conan (a hack n’ slash game of exquisite entertainment value). I’m thinking this is going to be great, though Jason is my least favorite of Greek heroes, I can give it a chance.
Well, I played it through. There’s actually only about three hours of actual “play.” The rest of the game is desperately long conversations with uninspired (perhaps too well known) characters, loaded with exposition and inopportune options for dialogue. Between running around expansive levels with limits options for action, interaction or combat, and the dreadfully elaborate conversations, I found myself considering turning the game off and returning it, at least for the first two hours.
Eventually, I started to get the hang of the game, and even enjoyed playing. Like any game in it’s genre, the camera angles aren’t quite right. Once you get used to the action, Jason becomes a much more effective fighter, and incidentally, much more fun to play. Of course, the opponents were either evil monsters from Tarterus or Ionians (an arbitrary selection from the true-life ancient greek sub-cultures), neither appearing as much more than a glowing suit of armor to be hacked at.
The inclusion of the other Argonauts seems superfluous. They serve very little purpose except to distract opponents while you massacre others. While we’re talking about the Argonauts, I feel compelled to comment on the game designers choices for Argonauts. The inclusion of Achilles and Pan, Lycomedes and Medusa, was just awkward. As one friend commented to me “It’s as if one designer was a classics major and the others had seen alot of movies.”
He’s right. There are moments in the game where the designers knowledge of classics is impressive. And in the rest of the game, they seem to nothing except what they learned from Clash of the Titans.
Over all, a simple, straight forward game with little to offer a true classics buff, too much talking and limited combat.