really want to see the movie 300 (being a fan of Frank Miller’s original graphic novel), so I was hoping that this game would provide a sneak peek at the film and maybe some good times in the process. 300: March to Glory only delivers halfway on both counts.

Players will control the Spartan king Leonidas as his small band of elite troops takes on the entire Persian army. This can be misleading, however, since you’ll only be fighting six or seven enemies at a time with even fewer Spartans at your side. Chop off the foes’ limbs with swords, spears, and shields. Upgrade weapons and armor, and unlock new combos and special moves. Defend against multitudes of arrows raining from the sky. It’s all pretty standard hack n’ slash – nothing really awesome or particularly crappy.

As a quick diversion from the main game, Leonidas will line up shoulder-to-shoulder with his troops in a phalanx formation, pressing forward while stabbing any soldiers who get in the way. What starts as a harmless minigame where you get to eventually slay some elephants later becomes a pesky pain in the ass with several cheap deaths.

The few puzzles that appear in the game are brainless lever-pulling exercises, and the limited stealth sections only serve to make you curse the usually passable camera. Cutscenes are a mix of comic book images and the in-game engine. The latter mostly consists of the camera zooming in on ugly character models as they all do a repeating knee bending animation in unison.

Players can unlock movie trailers and stills by playing through the game and collecting golden lambdas, but most of this stuff you can already see online. I guess this might be a fun game to rent and beat on a Saturday. After all, developer Collision does add a little something at the end of the game to make it not as much of a downer.