I WILL BONK YOUR ASS: A REVIEW OF SHADOW OF ROME

Shadow of Rome is a wonderfully evocative title for a videogame. It suggests an ancient and mysterious world, lousy with back room conspiracies and torrid adulterous affairs occurring inside vast, majestic coliseums and Senate halls; a time of corruption and deceit, of violent justice, of venal senators and murderous Caesars.

The box art is not as wonderfully evocative as the title, but it is packed with archetypal images: fire, gilded armor, those funny Roman solider hats. The cover image of an imposing Centurion with malice burning in his eyes looks kind of terrible, but its composition reminds me of a promotional poster for one of those great sword and sandal epics of the 50's, usually starring Kirk Douglas or Charlton Heston. Let's pretend that ugly render is Heston, actually. Now that is a cover with some gravitas. Pretend Heston towers over a gladiatorial arena, casting his long shadow over the entire structure. Flames flicker in the distance.

Looking at that box excites me. I have spent most of my life playing games filled with effeminate men-children moping their way though turn based combat, and while I regret nothing in my past, now that I'm a grown man, I should be playing games made for grown men like me. Placing the disc in my PS2, I'm prepared to enter a world of majestic brutality, of pagan rituals and of glorious excesses, all recounted in dactylic hexameter.

Yes, I am ready to enter the Rome I heard so much about in my high school Western Civilization class. After 10 minutes of playing this game, I realize something doesn't seem quite right.


copyright IGN.COM . I don't have any screen capture technology yet, sadly.


The Rome depicted in Shadow of Rome does not evoke the great histories of Nepos or Sallust. Suetonius never mentioned, in his histories of the Caesars, the great challenges in governing a nation of staggeringly dense citizens. This game gave me newfound respect for ancient civilization; to realize Rome struggled valiantly against the overwhelming stupidity of its citizens and still manage to reach such heights is to realize what a sad and beautiful world we live in.

So, Shadow of Rome suggests an era ruled by moronic people and illustrates this historically questionable thesis with those involved in the central conflict of the game. Standing for all that is rotten in the omniverse is a very loud group of conspirators vying to wrest control from the just and righteous citizens of Rome. Opposing them are the two stupidest people in the whole of the ancient world. They alone can set things right after Julius Caesar's murder.

You control the two stupidest people in the entire empire, Agrippa and Octavianus. Agrippa's father has been framed for the murder of Julius Caesar by a devious group of senators. Octavianus is cousin to the recently murdered Caesar, and a friend of Agrippa.

Considering the disparity between our protagonists, theirs is a surprising, unlikely friendship. If judged solely by his actions, Agrippa is a murderous sociopath, a man who takes great pleasure in brutality, bathing himself in blood amid the deafening cheers of approving spectators. This is but one side of his personality, however; he's a warrior-king with a soul made of puppy dogs and butterflies at heart. Most of the time, as the bloodthirsty masses cheer his murderous rampages, Agrippa hoists his hands skyward in triumph, leaving the impression that he's a pretty calloused dude. It is a bit difficult to take his boring soliloquies about the horror of war and his bombastic anti-violence speeches to the assembled masses seriously after all that. Agrippa is large and contains multitudes, I guess.

In contrast to the manly, hairy Agrippa, Octavianus is a slight, gorgeously coiffed, fey Roman boy. Although he is spoken of as weak, he still looks like he could bench press two elephants at once. I assume this is a byproduct of the weirdo art design in this game. Unlike his friend Agrippa, the opportunity to murder never arises in Octavianus' missions, but he can be forced to bonk his enemies on their heads with one of the thousands of vases lying about his levels. Yeah, I know. That is pretty fey.

The game beings in earnest after Agrippa, for rather unlikely reasons that I can't remember now, choses to become a gladiator to clear his father's name. The game is played from Agrippa's perspective, mostly. His levels are usually fights to the death inside a variety of nearly identical arenas. This works in favor for the game; Agrippa has already slaughtered hundreds of people before Octavianus even looks at a vase. This is as it should be.

Be forewarned: during these coliseum matches, Agrippa is going to break hundreds of maces, but that is nothing compared to how many swords he's going to shatter, which number in the thousands. The blacksmiths must have been awful in ancient Rome. Every successful *thwack* damages every weapon he swings. Even the massive, imposing broad sword with the gold inlay and the jagged spikes of terror jutting out every which way -- a sword so large Agrippa requires both hands to even lift the damn thing -- falls apart with alarming rapidity. To break a weapon, especially one picked up five seconds beforehand, is to be enraged by the weapons fatigue system.

There is one object that will never bring rage to anyone, however. Agrippa is going to find a lot of gigantic rocks in these coliseums, and there is no way you can tell me these boulders don't totally rule. As weapons, they aren't particularly useful. As objects of amusement, they're unparalleled. Agrippa walks like a cripple whilst toting this geological marvel, leaving him incredibly vulnerable and pulverable. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. You have a goddamn 250 lbs. boulder to throw at people, and when you hit them, they die in the most heinous ways. It's great.

The best part is, you can really throw that rock at anyone, even the spectators.

Throwing dangerous things at those who patronize your business may not be the wisest idea, unfortunately. Antagonizing them is of no benefit to Agrippa. They want to like him; they follow his bloody exploits intensely. If he murders with flair and élan, the rabble excitedly pelts him with food and weapons. Now, these wonderful accouterments they're throwing into the arena are clearly meant for one person and one person alone, but there's no honor among the condemned. Agrippa gets a lot of his stuff stolen -- it's the heat of battle, all is fair in love and war, whatever. Well, that's just wrong. Agrippa's going to find those who eat his food, and then Agrippa's going to go after them with those aforementioned brittle weapons, and he's going to sever the arm off whichever fool took his things, and after he gets his bread back, Agrippa's going to beat that jerk to death with his own severed arm. That'll teach 'em to steal.

Teaching lessons such as the one above rule nearly as much as hitting people with rocks.

Agrippa kills in a handful of different places, in a handful of different scenarios. As he makes a name for himself, he travels across the empire, killing every single person he meets, which may not be beneficiary to whoever follows Julius Caesar as emperor: citizens generally look down upon those who gain office though the exploits of a single psychopathic guy in a tunic. However, as soon as Agrippa gets into the first chariot race, he discovers it is retarded and impossible.





Octavianus seems a bit less happy than his boulder wielding compatriot, even though he possesses some really gorgeous hair. His missions are like glorified Nancy Drew adventures, with lots of searching for the truth behind Julius Caesar's death. Time is not on Octavianus' side: if he cannot solve this mystery before Agrippa's father is executed, you just know Agrippa's really gonna freak out and deliver sermons about the sanctity of life while eradicating entire townships. Luckily, Octavianus has a foolproof plan to discover what lies at the heart of this murder mystery: by hiding vases behind his back until he sees a chance to bonk someone on the head, the shaky alliance between those who conspired to murder the emperor will crumble. Somehow. Until this plan comes to fruition, however, Octavianus must use stealth and cunning to advance to the next bonkable person.
Wisely, the developers of Shadow of Rome have given Octavianus the ability bonk just about anyone, including completely innocent shopkeepers and orphan children. It is as close as Octavianus can get to hitting people with rocks, and it is nearly as awesome.

Understandably, this epidemic of bonkings around the Forum creates a minor panic, and security is tight. Perhaps this extra security emboldens the haughty conspirators to throw caution to the wind and just go wild, loudly congratulating each other, telling anyone nearby how great their conspiracy is. They won't talk about anything really incriminating while in public, but they will say things like this:

"Boy, I hope no one finds out I'm meeting BRUTUS on THE SENATE FLOOR in ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES to talk about HOW WE TOTALLY DIDN'T KILL CAESAR!"

Then, in twenty minutes, sure they are safe, the conspirators will go into more detail. These are the only times when Octavianus can't bonk someone with a vase, no matter how often he tries.

Octavianus really needs access to Agrippa's rock hurling catapult. I don't know if he'd put vases instead of rocks inside of it, but no matter. To know the the rock-hurling catapult is to love it -- it can really hit the hell out of anything.

Neither Agrippa or Octavianus is much fun to control. I read claims that Agrippa is capable of many dozens of different attacks on Gamefaqs. This is a big, fat lie. Rather, Agrippa may be capable of many dozens of attacks, but under my guidance, he is not. I find my chances of performing one of the more esoteric maneuvers improves dramatically after I stop trying to perform the required button combinations and start wailing on my controller with reckless abandon. At least throwing rocks is pretty easy.

Octavianus handles somewhat better simply because there is less action during his missions. Also, they're incredibly easy. In the rare cases where my desire to bonk someone results in my getting spotted by guards, I've managed to lose them by running around in circles for half a minute, or by hiding in vases too large for me to use in my bonking. I can jump into a vase while a guard is literary looking RIGHT at me and avoid any prosecution for my antisocial behavior. Still, the rush isn't as great as it is with Agrippa. Octavianus does not attack people with their own limbs; therefore, he is less interesting to control than Agrippa.

Both are possible to maneuver with some degree of grace. The Chariot, on the other hand, is ingeniously designed to handle with no semblance of grace, or rationality for that matter. The Chariot is as awful as the killing with the rocks is awesome.

I cannot stress enough how little fun the Chariot races are. There is no connection between the commands you input into the controller and the actions the chariot takes on the television. All the while Agrippa is pelted with arrows from unseen archers. Passing these stages is a matter of luck and patience, and because I lack both of those qualities, I never finished the game.

The chariot looks very stupid, but the rest of the game has a nice, polished look about it. It doesn't look very realistic, but I didn't think it would after looking at the cover. Character models are huge and muscular, but all the humans in the game suffer from atypical body types; everyone has weird head sizes, stubby legs, remarkably thick torsos. Some of the effects are pretty neat, especially the geysers and geysers of blood and viscera.

The extreme nature of the combat is by far the best thing Shadow of Rome has going for it. The tactile sensation of lobbing some poor virtual criminal's head off is among the best the PS2 has to offer. The basis of the combat system relies on the pressure applied to the square button: the longer it is held, the more vigorous the resultant attack. What little strategy there is in combat revolves around timing your weak and fierce attacks. Ancillary weapons can be picked up, but they're mostly useless. Also, you cannot carry both a boulder and a little throwing dagger, so what's the point?

Some people might get offended by this wanton carnage. These people, mostly virgins, should calm down. Shadow of Rome's gore is far too surreal to be taken seriously. Capcom somewhat pointlessly gave you an option to tune the visual aftermath depicted to your preference. I did turn all the blood off, once, and discovered a much more pedestrian game play experience when I did so.

Shadow of Rome is not exactly a good game. It is sometimes repetitive and frustrating, and sometimes it is way too simplistic to be much fun at all. It is also an embarrassingly, unintentionally weird retelling of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, filtered though that unique Japanese view of Western culture. Discounting the chariot for a moment, the game alternates between otherworldly bloodletting and insipid information collecting without ever meshing the two disparate styles in a satisfying way, unless something radically changes after the Chariot race.

But... but... I'm helpless when faced with this game's charm. I cannot accept the objective truth: Shadow of Rome is a bad game. Yet, in spite of the game's many flaws, I spent an entire summer playing it. The only sensible explanation behind the game's appeal has everything to do with the ridiculous violence and little to do with the game itself. I wish it was deeper than that, but it isn't.

You know what, though? If I want depth, I'll go play a hardcore SRPG or something. If I want to experience a satisfying narrative experience, I'll play Indigo Prophecy and quit before reaching the third act. Shadow of Rome, while lacking both storytelling prowess and deep gameplay, does remind me how fun killing people with gigantic axes can be, and sometimes that's more than enough to recommend it.