E3 2002: The Gladiators impressions

We caught up with Arxel Tribe at this year's E3 and spent some time with The Gladiators. This upcoming real-time strategy game is a colorful, fully 3D game that makes use of 3D terrain and also has some destructible objects on its large, wide-open maps. The game lets players take command of one of three sides: modern-day US Army soldiers, magic-using sorcerers, or futuristic robots. Each of the three sides is represented by cartoon-style portraits that are used as icons in the interface and in the game's in-engine cutscenes.

The Gladiators is clearly intended to be a fast-paced pick-up-and-play game. Arxel Tribe intends the average game session to last about 10 minutes--a goal that seems reasonable considering how quickly the action ramps up. The Gladiators is set in a bizarre world where the three sides have been captured and made to fight in arenas--huge outdoor maps on which battles are fought and televised. Players don't harvest traditional resources in The Gladiators. They can pick up bonus mana that they can use either to power their special abilities or to create new units, which are generated rapidly from each player's base. The idea is that The Gladiators will let players choose to play the game either as a large-scale real-time strategy game by expending all their mana on huge armies, or as a small-scale tactical game by creating a small army and micromanaging its movements carefully, using their mana to heal and protect their troops.

Each of The Gladiators' maps is large and has good-looking terrain textures, though some of the 3D objects, such as trees, bases, and watch towers, look a bit rough around the edges. Interestingly, each of the three playable sides will have a hero unit that will gain experience levels and learn new abilities by getting fame points--approval from the game's audiences. Overly cautious players who spend too much time building up their armies and scouting out every last inch of the map will bore the audiences, and they may actually lose fame points, so it will be in players' best interests to get out there and start fighting. The Gladiators will have about 21 single-player missions and will support up to 16 players in multiplayer games. We'll have more information on The Gladiators as it becomes available.