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It sounds like an upcoming episode on the Discovery Channel, but Great War Nations: The Spartans is actually a middling real-time strategy game featuring two distinct campaigns and four playable factions. It is the official follow-up to Ancient Wars: Sparta, a game heavily criticized for being a scoop of vanilla in a carton of Neapolitan. Released one year later, the sequel unfortunately hasn't learned many lessons from the past. The Spartans simply doesn't do enough things "new" to distinguish itself in a genre that has seen more qualified entries than the Publisher's Clearing House.

Meet the Spartans

The best part of The Spartans is its detailed world. The environments feature so many lifelike details, the only things missing are camels spitting and horses passing gas. Grass and trees gently sway back and forth; birds aimlessly fly overhead; plumes of smoke billow from small fires; and more. Some of the details aren't just for show, either. The wind actually has some bearing on the action, influencing not only a ship's sailing speed but also a unit's projectile range and even the spread of fire. One drawback to the visuals is the generic looking character portraits that appear whenever you click on a unit. The talking heads lip-synch worse than Ashlee Simpson and have the same vacuous stare.

While the presentation is generally positive, the actual gameplay is more predictable than a Three's Company rerun. You build a base (acropolis), create workers (helots), and gather resources (gold, wood, and food). While we like to think Spartans don't need anything more than their bare hands, long toenails, and unwashed bodies to overpower their spineless foes, they actually need equipment. To support the army, workers can build both economic and military structures designed to transform your fledgling outpost into a bona fide fortress complete with scalable walls, spear traps, and other tools of the trade. Again, there's nothing remotely original about any of the core play mechanics: establish an economy, build structures, and conquer.

It's All Greek to Me

The artificial intelligence is typical of second-tier strategy games. The computer will quickly send small raiding parties to attack your nearest farm and will continue attacking until they are mercilessly slaughtered. A few minutes later and another suicidal group will appear looking for another smack down. Sound military tactics are not exactly the computer's forte, so don't expect ambushes or clever diversions. While upping the default difficulty setting offers a stronger challenge, it's only because the computer seems to build faster and amass more resources, not because it is actually "smarter" on the battlefield. Another bane of real-time strategy games, the pathfinding AI, is a problem with The Spartans. Expect to baby-sit units to ensure they get to where they need to go.

Tonight We Dine in Hellas

The single-player campaign offers two separate story lines, but neither is inspiring. Sparta's campaign primarily focuses on maintaining control over its populace, while Macedonia has you working with Alexander the Great in an attempt to unite Ancient Greece, referred to as Hellas. Each campaign spans seven missions offering both primary and secondary objectives. Yet the goals don't vary much in terms of strategy. You essentially need to eliminate the rival faction's main base. Missions open with brief cut-scenes and stilted dialogue, setting up the objectives before you get down to business. There is no persistent army or experience system found in the campaign, so missions are treated as separate levels with no affect on subsequent stages.

The one distinguishing element of The Spartans is a leftover from Ancient Wars: Sparta. Perhaps the coolest part of the game is the ability to outfit custom troops with different weapons or even take over chariots and mounts from fallen enemies. Shields, clubs, and other weapons left behind from battle can be picked up by your workers and become part of your arsenal, which is a nice touch. Yet this game is hardly Rome: Total War in terms of tactical battle options. You can order your troops to fight freely, in a 14-man line, or in a five-wide column, but they tend to take these commands with a grain of salt. Once a battle commences, the formation basically devolves into a free-for-all.

This is Sadness. This is The Spartans. 

The Spartans is far from a disaster, but it's hard to carry a torch for something outshined by earlier real-time strategy games, even relics like 2000's Age of Empires II. The Spartans offers four factions (Spartans, Persians, Egyptians, and Macedonians) that basically play the same aside from some minor variations. There's no online multiplayer support, with the game opting for LAN play with up to eight combatants. Yet only two of the paltry 12 maps even support eight players, so it's a wonder why the developers even bothered. While solo Spartans can create skirmishes against the computer, there's no diversity in game types or objectives. Great War Nations might appeal to those new to the genre, but strategy vets will want to "erase this memory of Sparta from the histories."

Review by: Scott Alan Marriott