When a huge blockbuster of a film like 300 is released it's no surprise to see a companion game launched in an effort to eek those few extra pounds out of fans. More often than not such titles (as well as being generally poor) are multiplatform releases aimed to hit as much of the available market as possible. So you can understand my natural cynicism when 300: March to Glory was announced as a exclusive, was the game so bad and the PSP market so hungry for content that the format had become the dumping ground for a title no-one cared enough about to launch it on any of the other platforms?

It'd be lovely to be able to follow up such a sceptical introduction with a glowing review detailing the many gaming triumphs held within the shiny UMD all the while chiding myself for have such a pessimistic lack of faith. However, this being the real world the chances of such a turn around were always slim and unfortunately only got slimmer with every minute spent playing. To start at the beginning for those who've missed the marketing (hands up who was getting very tired of the adverts between every segment of the otherwise wonderful 'Heroes' on Sci-Fi recently!) 300: March to Glory is the game of the film of the graphic novel, albeit with a pointless sub-title added to confuse matters. The plot such as it is follows the ancient battle of Thermopylae where three hundred heroic Spartan warriors held their ground against thousands of Persian soldiers led by Xerxes I. Considering its direct comic book heritage it's to be expected that this is a highly stylised re-telling of history, but the numbers don't lie and such an against-the-odds battle seems like the perfect setting for a decent game.

That is of course until you load it up, following the strangely un-engaging introduction consisting of a still image montage accompanied by a suitably gruff voice over the camera sweeps through a battlefield managing to show off perfectly the jerky lumbering animation, bleak featureless environments and the staggeringly low polygon count on each of the character models. It's enough to make you turn off right away and proves once and for all that if you're going to try and get away with an engine that wouldn't have looked out of place on a PS1 don't try and do it on the crystal clear PSP screen where every dodgy texture and painfully blocky model is made sharply visible. Get past the ropey visuals and you'll find a button bashing brawler as bog standard as they come, you've got your light, heavy and shield attacks all of which can be strung together to create different combos with which to deal death to the Persian hordes. The more damage you deal the more you build up your Wrath meter which can be used to add a dose of extra power to attacks or, when full, can be spent on a battle move. These battle moves become available as the game progresses and despite their fancy (and forgettable) titles pretty much boil down to your gaming staples like regain health and increased damage. They're handily mapped to the four direction buttons on the d-pad, which makes them easy to use but also obviously limits their number to a rather measly four.

Although on paper being vastly outnumbered while wading through a large army is a promising recipe for gaming success, Collision Studios unfortunately forgot to add the cup full of playability and the sprinkling of fun that any gaming dish needs. That 300 can make such an inviting prospect so flat and dull is almost an achievement in itself, the relentlessly repetitive combat consisting of such a limited number of moves with scarcely a visual flourish to reward the player that it becomes brain achingly dull faster than you can possibly imagine. To give Collision credit they do seem to have noticed how bad the main game is and have tried to break it up with some sections that require you to form a phalanx (a chain of relentlessly marching warriors who use their bodies, shields and spears to essentially create a walking wall of death) with your fellow warriors and march across the battlefield killing everything in your path while avoiding taking enough damage to break the formation apart. If it sounds dull written down and it's not much more fun to play, utilizing an even more limited array of moves than the rest of the game coupled with the faintly absurd sight of a whole row of Spartans aimlessly poking their spears forward in pixel perfect harmony to kill a single Persian who's standing so far to one side only the man on the end needed to have moved the whole phalanx sections smack of last minute desperation. With frankly horrible collision detection (no need to get too close to the elephants as your spears seem to have a 'Go-Go Gadget' ability to cause harm without making visible contact) and the nagging worry that the whole Phalanx idea, as depicted by the game, could have been defeated by any Persian nippy enough to have run around the side and attacked from the rear means these entire sections feel tacked-on and badly thought out.

As if knowing that there's not much in the game design to keep people playing, 300: March to Glory attempts to hide its failings behind a rapidly climbing difficulty curve, throwing ever increasing numbers of enemies at you while providing nothing more than a few weapons upgrades and additional combos to deal with them. When one of the main problems in a game is the dull repetitive combat surely it's not only me who can see the gaping flaw in the logic that dictates the best way to deal with that problem is make the player take part in combat that gets frustratingly hard thereby making it even more tiresome.

There isn't really much else to say and, as you may have gathered by now, even less to enjoy about 300: March to Glory. As depictions of large battles go its probably the least epic I've ever seen, hampered by an engine that seems unable to cope with more than ten or twelve characters on screen at once and some of the most soul destroyingly boring combat you'll find it manages to take a fantastic premise and some of the most visually striking source material around to produce a game that will be filling bargain bins around the country within weeks. I'm not much of a fan of country walks much less regimented marching, neither of which sound particularly glorious to me. But given the choice between a cross country fifteen mile march and playing more of 300 I'd favour fresh air in my lungs any day of the week.

40%

By Paul Newcombe