300 / 300: Rise of an Empire

This is SPARTA!

"300" follows the story of King Leonidas, from his childhood when he is brain washed and trained like the rest of his male kin to become fearless warriors and focuses more upon his command of three hundred Spartans defending a narrow pass against the uncountable armies of Xerxes, the incredibly tall and gifted with a poor sense of fashion. The plot has a narrator which is forgivable for me in how it is used here, and it also calls for a lot of violence, decapitation, awesome FX and combat routines and a tiny bit of sex.

They probably deserved some Maccers after training to look like that!

But what it has the most is: slow motion capture. Yep. That dude getting hit by a spear? Slow mo! This guy getting hacked to pieces? Slow mo. Sex Scene? Slow mo. Guys walking / traveling from point A to B: Slow mo. That last one irritated me a little as it's basically just filler. Also filler is the majority of Lena Headey's role here. She and the council bit could have been entirely cut or at least been tied in better to the one eyed guy who basically is the one who gets shit done in the end.

Also, while the fighting scenes really take more than a few liberties in that the Spartans hold a phalanx for... oh around 60 seconds in the entirety of the film and spend most of the battle out in glorious solo combat like Highland berserkers, Leonidas' decision to "not use" the hunchback doesn't make sense. Yes, he's no good in a phalanx but that's not exactly what you guys were doing anyway! Still I give this violent and bloody film three and a half swords out of five, and wouldn't mind watching it again.

~-~

The sequel "Rise of the Empire" again makes use of a narrator, not so well this time, and follows the Athenian champion Themistocles (who ironically doesn't have the charisma of Leonidas acting wise). It also acts as an origin story about the war and Xerxes himself, how he was a normal dude before jumping into a magical pool of godliness. Erm? Also, the "bad guys" look less hideous this time around, while the "good guys" are less buff (makes sense since they aren't Spartans) - which also smells a bit like saving some cash for the props and training department.

While most of the combat here focuses on ship to ship combat it is still a brutal and bloody affair. There's also less slow mo which is better for me as you can appreciate the fight choreography more. Alas some of that goes out the window with the feats of jumping, throwing, and magical sniper-archery involved but perhaps the worst plot part is the "we need to put a sex scene in". The scene itself is nice (hello Eva Green!) but just ... story wise, you'll see what I mean. Anywho, I give it two and a half out of five heat-seeking arrows and also wouldn't mind watching it again (though the first one would be preferred).

F*** you, physics.

Futuristic Medieval Fantasy: Atlantica Online

Finally a game where I can drive up to a centaur shaman in a bright yellow sports car and then whack it with my sword, magic and cannons then go pick up Joan of Arc, Anck Su Namun, Napoleon and the spartan Leonidas to take part in the Battle of Red Cliff in China. I think that sentence sums up the WTF time travel factor that's going on in Atlantica Online. Despite age consideration, almost everything in the game feels clunky and the constant popups of other people winning / doing stuff that have to be manually closed don't help. I do quite like the music though, and the combat system is... different.

"Different" doesn't always mean "good".

Each fight is an instance where you and your enemy take turns to command your team (of up to 9) to annihilate the other. There's a small level of tactical play to be had but I can't really say this is an improvement to the standard combat present in other MMO's. It actually reminds me a bit of the old Final Fantasy games complete with lack of useful terrain but with more importance on positioning. I understand that there's a second mode of combat that expands on this which hopefully is better but I haven't reached it yet being only level 56 (out of 150 I think) as of this post. At least leveling is fast, I mean you even get XP from idling. Powerup by going AFK?

Quests are as basic and grindy as you can get, with no branching paths (so far) most of which involve being a courier or to kill a number of fairies/robots/fairy-robots combination and a lot of long distance running. Huzzah for the auto move feature. There's even an auto fight feature if you want the game to play itself for you I imagine. I don't think Atlantica has a whole lot going for it, but for some unfathomable reason I keep wanting to follow that sparkly trail to the next quest just to see how much more whacked out the game can be. Still, I can't really recommend it. If you really want to play a F2P Nexon game give Mabinogi a try instead. It's way better. :)

Update: I just got to the main world map and it is hilarious. The map pretty much tries to emulate the real world (scaled down) with cities and all, specifically during eras of unrest. From Babylon, to Troy, to Yggdrasil, to Sydney and Uluru (yep, Australia is one of the hardest zones. Lol!). The overland zones are strangely very sparsely populated with enemies too (they make up for it in the hostile dungeon zones).

Also it's very funny to be selling stuff to Colombus and chatting with Caesar while an army of players mounted in tanks AFKs nearby. Similarly while wandering through the Troy battle field I turned a corner to find someone chilling in a Ferrari. Lastly there is a housing system of sorts but it looks a lot more like a customizable warehouse than an actual home, the one I went into anyway.