Sands of the Coliseum
Sands of the Coliseum Review Sands of the Coliseum is a free to play multiplayer death match-style fighting game that you can play online. If you are a fan of famous period in Roman history where the gladiators had to fight in a battle to the death, youwi ll love the brutality and gore that this game has to offer. If you are squeamish, then I suggest you go on and play a game that has no violence and blood.
With that being said, Sands of the Coliseums introduction movie should be an indication that this game is certainly one that shouldnt be played by young kids. Its a well animated and orchestrated cartoon that shows two gladiators fighting to the death. After a brief scuffle, one of them manages to cut off the others arm before stabbing him in the face. The video is a good indication for the things to come.
After the violent yet entertaining video, you are prompted to create a character for you to use. You have the option of choosing to be either a male or female character plus you can customize the appearance of them as well. This includes their skin color, hairstyle, face and piece of clothing they are to wear. Its also worth noting that choosing a male character allows you to have more strength, but a female character is able to regain MP more quickly during battles. Once you have decided on the appearance of your chosen gladiator, you are then prompted to play through the games tutorial.
The combat in this game is turn-based much like it is when you are playing any other traditional RPG video game. But unlike with most RPG video games, theres a few more options for you to choose from that make this particular combat system more fun and intuitive.
One of the biggest changes is that you can actually choose how powerful you want to strike at your opponent. Obviously most people would want to attack them as hard as possible, although this is risky because you will lose your precision as a result of this and your opponent might dodge your attack. This game makes you think about when the best time is to strike an opponent with a strong attack and when you should soften them up first with weaker yet more precise attacks. Its an innovative feature that is rarely seen in other games.
Instead of just a lifebar that an enemy has, you can concentrate and exploit their different body parts. This was an exciting feature to include and rarely do you see a fighting game where you can concentrate on a specific body part of an enemy. The only games that I know that allow you to target specific body parts are professional wrestling video games and Fallout 3.
Attack and exploiting body parts becomes an important part of the game because it allows you to weaken an opponent more quickly to finish them off. Not only that, but some enemies will be wearing armor that may block and protect certain parts of their body. If a certain enemy is wearing body armor, you can just concentrate all of your attacks their head instead and kill them off that way. Although if the enemy is wearing full armor, you will have to break it first before you can attack their actual body parts. If you attack a specific part of their body long enough, you can see limbs being cut off!
Once you have damaged an opponent severely, they will slump down and you have two options to finish the match. You can show an opponent mercy by letting them live, or you can finish them off by killing them leaving them dying in their own pool of blood. Letting them live allows you to gain experience points, while killing them allows you to gain some loot. Loot can include weapons and/or armor or just other items you can use to sell.
The combat system in Sands of the Coliseum opens up and becomes more enjoyable when you acquire more skills, weapons and armor for you to use. You can use a combination of one-handed or two-handed swords plus you can equip a shield too to block any of your enemys incoming attacks. There are also skills that you can use during battles as well. Skills vary in terms of their abilities and usefulness. Some skills allow you to execute a more powerful attack on your opponent while others will allow you to dodge your enemys attacks. Its up to you how you want to improve on your own gladiator.
The main game itself is just a series of arena-based battles against a lot of A.I. controlled opponents. Once you have cleared a certain number of objectives to do in one arena, you will unlock a new arena to fight in that will allow you to do the same thing all over again. Its an addictive process that will easily suck hours of your free time! Some of the objectives vary from just defeating a certain number of gladiators, to even more specific tasks such as decapitating an opponent or ripping out their legs.
Sands of the Coliseum isnt just a single player game either . The game allows you to hire a slave where you can recruit a mate to help you out during battles. They do come at a high price though so it pays to save up it bit of money first before you go spending it all on slaves. The game gets harder when you unlock more cities, so investing on a slave is a good idea to think about if you want to get pass the latter and harder arenas the game has to offer.
There is multiplayer feature added to this game as well. You can face off against real player in real-time that will make things even more interesting. The multiplayer plays similarly to the single player and you can even team up with other players to play in entertaining team-style deathmatches.
Graphically, Sands of the Coliseum has one of the bloodiest special effects I have ever seen in a free to play video game before. If you are a fan of the Mortal Kombat series, youll love the amount of red liquid that is squirted throughout the screen in this game. The limbs and heads that fly off may look cartoonish, but they are wonderfully animated. The games 2D visuals and character models may look simplistic compared with other games, but the violent animation more than makes up for this.
The audio in this game is a mixed bag and may not appeal to everyone. The groans and moans of the gladiators fighting plus the heavy metal music may sound out of place for some people. I did not mid the music, although it does not sound like it belong during the Roman era. Although the audio of the crowd sounds impressive as it adds to the overall arena-like atmosphere that the game is aiming for.
If you are a fan of the Gladiator movie or video games like God of War and Mortal Kombat, you will absolutely love the amount of brutal violence and gore that Sands of the Coliseum offers. It may not be the hardest game to play, but the combat is fun enough to keep gamers occupied for hours and playing against other players is a very fun experience as well. If you love seeing blood and limbs being torn off, this game is certainly one title you should play. If excessive violence isnt your thing, go away now and play something thats not R rated.
Sands of the Coliseum
