Although I haven’t played Punch-Out!! for the Wii, I can see where the appeal is. Rage of the Gladiator is much in the same vein as the Nintendo boxing title, except with fantasy medieval spin. Is it worth the 1000 Wii Points though?
Rage of the Gladiator (WiiWare)
Developer: Ghostfire Games
Release date: March 15, 2010
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
In Rage of the Gladiator, you play as Gracius, a prince who has been accused of killing his father, King Marius. The story is slowly unfolded through artwork and narration between bouts. When in battle, Gracius is forced to fight for his life in the arena as they throw enemy after enemy at him. Armed with a hammer and trusty shield, Gracius will need to bash, crush, and smash his opponents to stay alive.
When you first fire up Gladiator, you have a few different control options to choose from. There’s holding the controller horizontally, as a classic type of input, or there are two motion options, one including the WiiMotion Plus. For this review I decided to go with the WiiMotion Plus since it felt more natural to my widely swinging ways of play. To attack, you simply swing the Wii Remote in the direction you want Gracius to attack. Blocking and shield bashing is done with the Nunchuk. It becomes important to master the controls due to the increased difficulty down the line. When using this particular set of controls, I still felt the urge to do long, hard, sweeping motions with my arms to get the real feel of smacking enemies around.
Fighting in the game is simple enough, attack the enemies and avoid their attacks which are easily seen since the game is played in a first-person perspective. As the difficulty ramps up however, it becomes more about recognizing certain patterns enemies exhibit and exploiting them. Both visual and audio cues play big roles and if you’re not paying close attention, you’ll be out of your allotted three health bars given per foe. When you’ve defeated an enemy, you’ll be presented with three skill trees that have several abilities that allow you to upgrade Gracius. This is a nice touch and does make it decent for replaying to see how other abilities will affect your play style. Be careful when making a selection though because once you go onto the next screen, you cannot get a refund on the ability points spent.
The game has eleven enemies, twenty-one fights, and two modes of play, Normal and Challenge. In order to reach the final boss of the game, you have to play through both modes completely. Although towards the end in Normal Mode, the game can get difficult, it pales in comparison to its Challenge Mode counterpart. For those who don’t feel the challenge during the first play-through, the game will show you it packs a punch when you arrive in Challenge.
When it came to the audio and visual aspects of the game, it’s one of the best out there for WiiWare. The music is dramatic and appropriate, while the voice acting adds to that instead of hinder it. Before each match, you’ll be able to read about the enemy you’ll be facing and that adds a sometimes amusing layer to their appearance. The models themselves are colorful and and interesting to view. It shows the developer was genuinely caring when they developed this title.
As far as WiiWare games go, this is one strong offering by Ghostfire Games. The amount of content the player receives is worth the buy-in. It’s incredible to think that they were able to stuff great music, decent voice acting, and good visuals into the 40MB limit WiiWare games are subject to. If you’re simply looking for more Punch-Out!! action or want to give the genre a spin, Rage of the Gladiator is worth a look.
