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Platform
Xbox 360
Genre
Action
Publisher
Namco Bandai
Developer
Game Republic
ESRB
T (Teen)
Released
July 27, 2010
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Boss battles in the second half of the game are mildly
entertaining
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- First half of the game is
completely uninteresting and forgettable button-mashing boredom
- Navigating through Medusa level is utterly confusing
- Co-op play doesn’t perform as intended
- Cut-scenes are completely awful
- One of the worst final boss battles ever
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Review: Dead Rising 2 (360)
Review: Stranglehold (360)
Review: How to Train Your Dragon (360)
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Clash
of the Titans
Score: 5.0 / 10
It's very easy to see that one of the
distant inspirations for the first God of War game was the
cheesy-yet-somewhat-entertaining 1981 movie, Clash of the Titans, with
its mythological gods versus man storyline. Not so ironic, then, that
when there was the inevitable videogame made from the Clash of the
Titans movie remake in 2010, it drew its gameplay inspiration from the
God of War gaming franchise.
However, there's nothing inspired at all in the Clash of the Titans
videogame, which is not anything more than yet another in a long, long,
long procession of awful
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was born of a union between a human mother and Zeus. Perseus gets
tangled in the new war declared on the gods by King Cepheus, and the
game tracks his journey to revenge Zeus for killing his human family.
The story is shown through some of the choppiest, completely awful
cut-scenes; voices don't match the moving mouths of the talking
characters, there's nonsensical pausing of dialog, and terrible
voice-acting; it's just an all-around atrocity.
As in God of War, there will be tons of Greek mythological creatures for
Perseus to fight along the way, including Medusa and the Kraken along
with minor creatures such as harpies, and of course fights against Hades
and Perseus' father, Zeus. There are allies that will assist Perseus
from the movie (Io and the winged stallion, Pegasus), although in actual
gameplay, they really aren't much help at all.
When there are opportunities for co-op gameplay, the camera is a
schizophrenic disaster, never seemingly knowing which one of the two
gamers to follow, causing all kinds of "cheap" deaths. Even worse, the
second player has nowhere near the power of Perseus in either weaponry
or magic, leaving the secondary gamer feeling more than a little
inadequate.
Besides the similar hack & slash gameplay, there's absolutely nothing in
Clash of the Titans that can compare favorably to God of War gaming.
Missions are many times completely idiotic and time-wasters in the first
half of the game, seemingly tacked on just to drag out total gameplay
hours. In one inane mission, gamers have to go and collect fish for a
gluttonously hungry comrade. Many others are nothing more than scouting
missions with an annoying collective of enemies impeding the way.
If gamers can make it through the monotonous first half of the game,
though, at least there are some much better boss battles throughout the
second half of Clash of the Titans, although most are not difficult at
all. In fact, what should be the hardest two fights facing gamers the
battle versus the humongous water creature, the Kraken, and the finale
where Perseus squares off against the supposedly most powerful of the
gods, Zeus – are ridiculously easy. The Zeus fight has got to be the
easiest boss fight ever, requiring a simple, timed button-pressing
exercise that lasts all of about one minute. Not exactly a memorable way
to wrap up a long gaming adventure.
With a main weapon as Perseus' disposal being a sword, it's the
sub-weapons that pack a much bigger wallop. Included in these are
hammers, dual swords, bows, axes and even unconventional battle
armaments, procured from fallen mythical foes: scorpion's tails and
harpy wings. Along the way, weapons can get upgraded, and unleash
meter-filled attacks that zap enemies, assisting gamers in more easily
defeating foes. Gameplay is all standard hack & slash: gamers smash and
pound enemies until they perish. Clobber a particular enemy enough, and
they get caught in a dazed glow, when the gamer can walk right on up and
initiate a finishing move that involves pressing a button with somewhat
perfect timing a few times that will trigger a death-blow cut-scene that
kills the enemy and grabs any weapon from them. After about the fourth
time seeing the same exact death cut-scene, gamers will quickly tire of
constantly seeing it over and over, though.
Like Icarus, a Greek mythological youngster that fatally didn't heed his
father's warning but somehow had the good sense to avoid appearing in
any variety of Clash of the Titans, this movie-to-videogame translation
thought it could soar gaming-quality heights to the hot brilliance of
God of War. But just like the doomed Icarus, that quest ended in a heap
of utter failure that befalls so many of the infamous movie-to-videogame
genre titles. With uninteresting and lackluster hack & slash gameplay,
along with a below-average presentation that's amateurish at best, Clash
of the Titans is even more unremarkable than its mediocre movie
counterpart, and the game's developers should be embarrassed that this
is the best they could conceive in a extremely flawed attempt to imitate
the God of War franchise.
- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com
(November 9, 2010) |
