Wrath Unleashed review

LucasArts haven’t always relied on the clout of its licenses to sell most of its games. Most of their earlier titles from the eighties were innovative and technologically groundbreaking (Rescue on Fractalus, anyone?). Wrath Unleashed is another break from their catalogue of film licenses, but one that draws its inspiration from a title in the early days - although surprisingly, one of their competitor’s.

Before the advent of real-time strategy games, players would dream about strategy games where you could watch your units battle one another onscreen. There was one fantasy image in the minds of gamers of the time. The holographic chess game played in Star Wars (Episode IV, for those of you who don’t remember).

We should have seen it coming

In 1983, Electronic Arts released one of their first ever games, in the form of Archon for the Atari 800/5200 computer. It was a game where you took turns moving your pieces around a chess-styled board, and then took part in action-based battles when two pieces met. The graphics were simple, but the pieces all had different abilities and powers that gave the game depth, especially when played against another player. So where does this leave LucasArts’ Wrath Unleashed, twenty-one years later?

There’s no denying that Wrath takes a lot of the essence of Archon and attempts to recreate it in modern form. Essentially, you move your magical creatures around a (now hexagonally based) board and engage in 3D fighting battles when two creatures meet. There are elements of strategy both in battle on and the board. Capturing different terrain can affect your levels of magical regeneration, and you can cast spells to affect units on the board.

Like its forebears, Wrath Unleashed is a game that plays at being a game. In this day and age it would be easy to produce a game where you moved pieces around a realistic battlefield and engaged in real-time battles. Wrath puts you into the role of a demi-god, watching your creatures like pawns on a chessboard, summoning and destroying them on your whim. Wrath strips away the reality and replaces it with the abstract.

Salvador Dali’s moustache

Which is apparent in every aspect of the game’s design, especially the artwork. All of the creatures that make up your units are surreal interpretations of classical monsters and mythical creatures. These designs are both strange and beautiful, from floating Djinns in ornate armour to arcane dark unicorns and shape-shifting elementals. Except for the demigoddesses, who parade around in ridiculous outfits. The problem with these outfits isn’t that they are too revealing, after all, Botticelli’s Venus manages to remain tasteful. No, they are simply ridiculous.

It is perhaps because of all of this graphical and graphic detail that Wrath tends to slow down a little on the Playstation 2 at times. Never enough to affect the gameplay, but just enough to noticeably dull the game’s shine. Another technical hitch is the loading that takes place both before and after battles. Yet another snag to drag you back into reality.

The music is suitably pompous, full of glowering horns and overbearing strings, just enough to suggest a B-movie battle of the gods. The voice acting also comprises various videogame regulars who wear the mantle of feuding deities well. All of the pomp of the Legacy of Kain series is present here.

Clash of the Titans

But where Wrath falls down is where it strays from the spirit of its ancestors. As the essence of the game is stripping an experience down to abstracts, overcomplicating things would be one of the biggest mistakes to make. Which is what the developers, The Collective, have done.

The combat attempts to compete on some level with modern fighting games, with a range of combination melee attacks and special moves. This creates too steep a learning curve (in the beginning at least) for those learning to use their full complement of creatures.

Unfortunately, once this initial barrier is broken, a second limitation appears: the less-than stellar artificial intelligence.

Not the sharpest tool in the box

Once you learn the ins and outs of the combat system, the computer opponent becomes easy to defeat. And sadly, the same is true for the strategy sections of the game. Although a wealth of strategic options is available, the computer fails to exploit most of them, making learning the rules and beating uneven odds the only challenge in the game.

Which is less dull than it seems. Although Wrath features a perfunctory plot, and some cut scenes, watching near defeat turn into victory is a story in itself. The combat sections can also create the illusion of a weak unit defeating an army of more powerful foes. In a sense, drama is inherent in the game system.

Doesn’t have a prayer

Which makes the fact that the game doesn’t work as it might even more frustrating. Wrath misuses an idea full of promise. Normally, in a game with these problems, the multiplayer mode comes along and rescues the whole experience. But in this case, it just about barely works. Four-player matches can be fun because of the pure chaos that can take place, but one-on-one battles usually end in painful stalemates that can last for hours until someone slips up.

Wrath can be an enjoyable experience for a while, but not in the way it could have been. While it may be a fun little jaunt with the appearance of a clever strategy/action game, if you attempt to play it that way you soon find out that it is fundamentally broken. A lesson from history, one hopes.