enoonmai
Cyborg Agent
Oh man, Shadow of Rome is just something you've got to experience. Right from the start of the movie, it looks like a rich take on "Gladiator", right from the Germania battles with flaming arrows to the assasination of the Emperor and shifting the blame onto someone else and then getting retribution, yadda yadda yadda. In fact, the protagonist, Agrippa, is pretty much a Maximus himself, moving from being a Centurion to a Gladiator. Having said that, its pretty good, being able to move seamlessly from a third person view to a first person view for shooting arrows, decapitating chariot races a la "Gladiator", etc. The interesting part about the game is the way you can use different aspects of the game to your advantage, moving stealthily behind a barbarian and taking him out or hiding behind some grass and throwing an axe at him from a distance, etc. Plus, your weapons have a "durability index" that reduces as you use the weapon, so after sometime, if you dont watch it, you could suddenly end up being totally without a weapon in the heat of battle. Of course, you can pick up other weapons as well as "meat" lying around to replenish your health, but again, the problem is that while Agrippa is eating to increase his health, he can't move and is totally open to the enemies' attacks. The other playable character in Rome, Octavianus, is more of an RPG type game, where you have to practice to build your skills, use a gratuitous amount of stealth to sneak past armed Praetorians, and then talk to people and use a lot of "social engineering" The story seamlessly switches between the two characters to tell the story of how Agrippa redeems himself and his family's name after his father is accused of murdering Julius Caesar. The graphics are good, but can also be starkly bad at times, especially when you watch the cheering audience, which looks totally tacky. The cutscenes are rendered amazingly well though, and the opening cutscene is just awesome. Of course, the game has a lot of blood and gratuitous dismemberment, so you can always chop off a person's arm and use it as a weapon against him. Blood effects are really good, and you can see the clean arena being stained and overflowing with blood once you're finished. All in all, a game that's a must-play. As they say, Morituri te salutamus, or rather as far as THIS game is concerned, Salve moriturum es! 
Shadow of Rome? Huge game, tried to find it, couldn't get it. the shop dude did has 600PS2 Games which i've seen, he also had latest titles like: Nanobreaker, Cold Fear, Consastine etc. SoR is Roman Onimusha 3. Excited abt playing it. Did any of u guys have 007: EoN? I've got it, its COOL.
