Spartan is a game about the battles that led to a unified Greece over 2000 years ago; you play one of 101 different groups of ancient Greek tribes that inhabit the archipelago of islands to the south and the mainland to the north. Each tribe has its own culture and background story, the entire game is historically accurate and hundreds of hours have gone into research so its fair to say that theres depth to be had here.
I got to see the game in action at ECTS, and I must admit, I was impressed. At first I thought it was Cossacks, but Cossacks isnt rendered in full 3D with a map out of Civilization to boot. As you plan your next strike, you have to make sure that your enemies arent waiting for that great big army of yours to leave town, because if you arent careful, they can come in from behind and take your town. The game was on display at the Intel stand. I caught up with JD McNeil and partner, who took me through the game mechanics. He wouldnt let me take any unofficial screenshots because the game is still in development, but I got a good idea about how the game plays.
The graphics arent completely finished yet, and as it was, they only had the pre-alpha version up and running so that people could see some of the battles in action. There can be up to 10,000 units fighting without any slowdown, all of which are viewable from different camera angles. With so many units and siege weapons available, its hard to see how this game will ever get boring. I hope they took on board my suggestion of having dead rats as catapult ammo (which was in fact the earliest known form of biological warfare). Other things like varied unit animations will also be put in.
From what I did see, this game will definitely do well. There is a good Civ-like strategy element, and the battles play smoothly, no matter how many units are involved. I watched a battle between the Persians and the Athenians. It started out with several large blocks of red and blue on a minimap and the main viewing area was devoted to the battle itself. As the Persian cavalry advanced, the Athenian phalanx lay in wait. At the very last moment, 100 spears, each 30 long came up out of the grass to meet the charging cavalry. Can you say kebab? I asked. Indeed they could. The rest of the Persian army saw this and thought oh dear. After a while the battle began to go in favour of the Athenians. Morale plays a big part in this game. If you start losing a little, youll soon start losing a lot. If your poor infantry are charged from the flanks or the rear, dont be surprised if they run off in terror.
The Persians use a lot of mounted units like horse archers, but the Athenians can easily counter them using their phalanx units. For their part the Athenians dont have any mounted units themselves, but they do have a good selection of siege weapons, including the awesome Greek fire (think flamethrower). This weapon is very effective at sea, or during castle sieges.
The only criticism I would have about this game is that its too similar to parts of other games like Civilization, Cossacks, Age of Empires 2 and most of all Braveheart. That said I still liked it a lot. Spartan has all the good bits from the games named above. Mixing turn-based strategy with real-time battles is a good idea. Barely any of the above are in 3D as much as this one is, and this game will let you do naval battles as well, with hundreds of ships fighting at the same time. By the time you finish playing, youll have learned all about ancient Greece before the Romans really came into power, including the names of some 100 peoples who lived in and around Greece. The graphics do need some polishing, but by the time the game is released, Im sure we can expect everything to be nice and shiny.
http://www.gamerseurope.com/article.php?id=370
