The modern remake of the film Clash of the Titans was horribly disappointing. Despite big-name actors, vivacious visuals and a mythology-steeped plot, at its core it lacked heart, suffering from poor pacing and acting. And the game isn’t much different. In certain respects it soars, in others it crashes, and the overall experience is ultimately unfulfilling. Sound familiar, moviegoers?
At times, Titans has some of the best graphics ever seen in a movie tie-in game. Environment textures are richly rendered and each location has an elegant art all its own. Beast models, such as the Pegasus and Hellhounds, are some of the best of any mythological game.
All is not Homeric, however, in the visual department. Character models are merely adequate, lighting textures flicker noticeably, and locations are excruciatingly linear in their layout that you’ll tediously travel the same path ad nauseam. But all that’s forgivable.
What isn’t forgivable is the stony, lifeless expression that plagues each character’s face. This along with the poor pacing and syncing of dialogue creates the feeling of watching a dilapidated animatronics show at Chuck E. Cheese. The characters subsequently feel cold and sterile, much like the acting in the actual film, one of the key reasons both lacked the needed heart to capture audiences.
Titans falls short on story flow on a number of levels. The momentum of each scene is splintered by frequent, awkward pauses in dialogue. The overall plot is disrupted by side quests that are intriguing at first but feel tacked on — much like the infrequent two-player co-operative play — in the later stages of the game. And throughout the game, an overabundance of load screens keeps the plot and the ancient world in which it is set from taking on a life of its own.
Where the shallow plot fails, the depth of the weapon-rich combat revitalizes. Unlike most games that have players gather weapons from vendors or fallen enemies, Titans has you seize magical weapons from weakened foes. This involves a mini-game with layers of finesse that will test the reflexes of even the most seasoned gamer.
Between the various weapons and their individual abilities, combined with the strategy of choosing the right weapons for the scenario, the fluid battle system always feels fresh and never degenerates into a hack-and-slash, button-mashing bore fest.
There is one final unique element to the gameplay that allows Titans to stand out. At the end of each quest, you are graded and rewarded with mythical gifts depending on how quickly and effectively you completed the task. The rewards are used to upgrade the myriad of weapons you collect along the way. The better your performance, the better the gifts you receive, and the more powerful you become. Most quests can be re-visited to improve performance and the gifts bestowed, which is particularly nice since you can go back with the improved weaponry you’ve collected. This also opens up new areas you may not have seen nor had access to in the original quest.
Taken within the context of the sea of disappointment that enveloped the movie, the Clash of the Titans video game shines at times. With its surprising visual presentation and the subtle, unique elements to the weaponry, combat and tactics, Titans rises to be one of the better movie tie-in games, though as a standalone action game, it still suffers the same inadequacies that will ever plague the movie tie-in video game.
When he’s not teaching junior high, St. Albert Catholic High alumnus Derek Mitchell spends his free time connected to a video game console.
