Gladiator is a game that will remind serious gamers of the classic video game, Gauntlet. The developers of Gladiator even describe it as a "Gauntlet-style" game in their documentation. While Gladiator is not as great a game as Gauntlet, it is certainly worth playing.
The graphics give players a very basic top-down view of the battlefield. While the graphics are not superb, they are far from crude. Each different character is rendered well and there is little confusion as to which characters are which. (The only possible exceptions are the druids and the archers. They appear very similar, except for the tiny bow that the archers carry.) The weapons firing and bursts of magic are rendered very well and greatly enhance the game.
The sound is kept to a minimum, and that is really just fine. Loud explosions and over-the-top sound effects would probably detract from the adequate simplicity of the game.
Game play is fairly easy to master, even though keyboard controls are the player's only option. Single player games are very enjoyable, and even two-player games can be played with relative ease. Three and four-player games, however, get quite crowded. Perhaps in the next version of Gladiator, the developers can include mouse and joystick capabilities for multi-player action.
There does appear to be a small flaw in Gladiator. Attempting to advance to the next level sometimes takes the team backwards. This happens rarely, but when it does, it gets quite annoying. Sometimes players can save the game and then reload it and eliminate the bug, but sometimes that does not work.
The game itself is very fun. It's total carnage as the red team goes on a spree, destroying all the blues and the greens who dare get in their way. Fighting can be tiresome and some
enemies stubbornly refuse to die. Don't go it alone. If your character is fighting more than one enemy, use the game's "YO" function to summon your team to fight by your side.
The most important thing to remember is to balance your team. Soldiers may be strong, but they are awfully dumb and usually die quickly. Elves are weak, but can walk through solid objects, enabling them to escape and fight another day. Each character has its own strengths and weaknesses. Practice will reveal these to you.
Gladiator is very fun. If you are the type of gamer who enjoys a good role playing game, but you hate useless animation and limited action, the Gladiator will probably
be a good pick for you.
Graphics: Simple, but good
Sound: Minimal
Enjoyment: Good fun
Replay Value: A good and different challenge each time
Gladiator resembles Gauntlet, set in medieval times. You must travel the forest and kill off all the monsters, collecting treasures en route. You can select from seven different classes of characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses in areas such as strength, dexterity and armor.
Gladiator is a strategic action game set in medieval times. From the top-down view, you control a single character at a time from your army of mercenaries. Two allies accompany you at the beginning for the first few maps, but you'll need to hire troops and train them to make a mercenary group strong enough to complete the missions ahead.
There are three difficulty levels: Skirmish, Battle, and Slaughter. This game is really tough to play efficiently. On Battle difficulty, it is easy to lose a unit or two in every fight (hire plenty of clerics!). Skirmish will make your life easier, but may make you look like a wimp. Thankfully, there are split-screen multiplayer modes which allow you to take up to three friends with you. Their help can be immeasurable and make the game much, much more interesting and fun. You can also choose to fight your friends as foes in a PvP mode.
The graphics are mostly simple tile-based art and involve some palette-swapping for effects. Repeated scenery is unavoidable since the tile-set is very small. This game was made with a scenario editor in mind, so this is what you should expect. You can create your own maps with the packaged map editor as well as your own mini-maps to go along with them, but you may not ever want to because the built-in scenarios are about as good as it gets unless you want to compile an entire campaign for your friends. With each built-in battle, you're given a little diary entry that explains the current mission in the context of your journey. Most of the time these are interesting readings, but eventually they become an annoying additional press of the escape key.
Gladiator truly shines in what you can do with your troops and the expectations of new level-ups. The 14 classes you can choose from are: The shoulder-charging Soldier, the boulder-tossing Barbarian, the forest-walking Elf, the quick and supportive Archer, the teleporting Mage, the miracle-working Cleric, the dagger-throwing Thief, the tree-loving Druid, the corpse-loving Orc, the corpse-being Skeleton, the fiery Elemental, the kudzu-like Slime, the wimpy Faerie, the wailing Ghost, and a hidden class, the mana-pumping Archmage. Troops can be trained to increase their strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, armor, and level. Experience is gained when a character hits an enemy, but you have the option of dishing out a lump of cash to push them over to the next level. Your characters will gain new abilities with higher levels (depending on the character class) and some hidden effects result as well with higher levels (like greater damage). Most of the special abilities are really unique and are fun to play with.
In all, Gladiator is a fun game to play with friends or just for the heck of it when you want to run around with an uber-character on a low-level map. Friends definitely add to the experience, so don't waste any more time! Go get friends!
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
People who downloaded Gladiator have also downloaded:
Glider for Windows, Get Medieval, Golden Axe, Glider: Collect'n Kill, Ghostbusters 2, Gods, Gauntlet, Ghosts'n Goblins
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