Colosseum is a hack'n'slash brawler developed by Shortfuse games. The game features 6 singleplayer levels, varying difficulty modes, tons of customisation and up to 4 player local multiplayer. Colosseum will set you back 400msp(£3.40).
The game puts you in the shoes of a Colosseum brawler to hack'n'slash your way to the top. Before even getting into the game however there is a relatively robust customisation feature, allowing players to customise their armour and weapons as they see fit. New customisation parts are purchased with the ingame currency earned through fights - rewarding those who stick with it. There are also 4 fighting styles available for your fighter - sword and shield, dual swords, a polearm and the hammer - each offering different combos and a reasonably substantial difference in how you fight.
This is where Colosseum sets itself apart - the fighting. All of the game's combat is done using the right analog stick. Simply push the stick in a direction to do an attack, string directions together to produce a combo. It's a system which is easy to get to grips with but also fun to use and offers a reasonable amount of depth. Unlike a retail fighting game there isn't hundreds of combos available but just enough to keep things interesting. Along with that, as you fight you gain 'rage' - using the controller's face buttons you can unleash the rage in a special attack such as bumping enemies away, pulling them in, healing yourself, or a killer combo. Also players are able to dodge and block by using the Right Trigger and Left Trigger respectively.
All of this comes together to offer an enjoyable style of combat. However there are some issues. The game's blocking mechanic only allows you to block when a combo stops, yet often the game stacks attacks. For example if one is to move the right analog stick to the right then left quickly, even whilst the 'right attack' is still going the game stacks the 'left attack' for when it's finished, however if one wants to block during the middle of this combo the game wont allow you to until the animations are finished. Soon enough this starts to lead to endless amounts of frustration when you're unable to block attacks, not due to player skill but simply down to a clunky system. This stems off into making the difficulty level unbalanced. Some enemies will use cheap tactics such as knocking you down and continuing to attack whilst you wait for the 'stand up' animation to finish. Combine this with points when the game throws a ton of enemies at you, all surrounding you, and throwing knock down projectiles at you; it becomes as frustrating as it sounds. Yet putting the game on Easy Difficulty makes the game simply far too easy, attacks do little damage allowing you to build up enough rage to heal yourself even when your health is extremely low.
Repetition is a large issue too. Each of the games arenas are basically just different backdrops for the same thing. There is never any environmental interaction. Each of the games areas also feature the same style of enemies - a standard melee opponent, a ranged opponent, an elite melee opponent and a boss. All of which come in the same order on every level, apart from the final battle. This could have quite easily been spiced up a little, however it has to be said that the enemies do have various unique properties and attacks despite being the same base style. The game's multiplayer offers simple arena match ups - a welcome albeit relatively non fleshed out addition.
Graphically Colosseum is absolutely gorgeous. Often you won't be able to believe that you're playing an Indie Game as the production quality really is that good. The effects all look fantastic, environments look wonderful and the characters interesting. The game uses a comic book styling which lends itself to the light hearted conversations along with allowing the game to look visually stunning. Sadly the sound however is not all that great, and is largely forgettable apart from the awesome end-game credits theme.
Colosseum is a tough game to review. Although it has some major balance issues and gameplay flaws the core combat, customisation and overall production values are well and truly superb. Through some difficulty and gameplay tweaks allowing the combat to become more fluid when fighting multiple enemies and less frustrating Colosseum could become a truly addictive 5 star experience, raising the bar for the service. Yet sadly its problems let it down. Regardless it is hard not to recommend Colosseum even if simply for showing the kind of production qualities which developers are able to achieve on the service.
Chaz gives Colosseum a 3.9/5
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There is nothing really I can add after the review Chaz has given, so just a couple of my own highlights/issues really.
Right, So Colosseum is a arena-based battle game, in-which pit your chosen fighter against waves of enemies. The aim of the game is to basically fight, gather as much gold as you can find, and kit out your fighter with all sorts of stuff. Unfortunately for me, the gameplay isn't addictive enough to make the hunt for gold and use of the equipment feel quite worth the effort.
But, when it comes to the game's presentation, this is in a different league to any other indie game I have seen. It has professional cel-shaded graphical quality that makes it look better than a lot of XBLA titles, So here i agree with Chaz. It looks great it really does.
Ultimately, Colosseum is a shining example of the potential that Community Games have. And I agree with the review Chaz has given. But it's a game that leave's you very unfulfilled, for myself at least.