Invictus: The Shadow of Olympus

Herald rating: ***

Interplay PC

$99.95

M15

Review: Peter Eley

Back in the days when Pentiums weren't even a twinkle in Intel's eye, an Atari ST game called Gods took up far too much of my time. It was a good-looking, sophisticated platform game with a mythological bent, and it took up all of a floppy diskette - the whole 1.44 megs!

So it was with more than the usual professional interest that the one gigabyte Invictus was installed. It is an intriguing concept - a strategy/role-playing game set around the fascinating mythology of the Greeks and Romans. You're a human who is caught up in a dispute between Athena and Poisedon. To prove a point, Athena sets you a series of tasks that you must achieve in order to stop Poisedon (the God of the sea) drowning humanity.

And you get to pick two legendary figures - from Achilles, Arachne, Atlanta, Cadmus, Elektra, Hercules, Hippolyta, Icarus, Orion and Perseus - to help you.

All the usual suspects from that period are there, too: centaurs, gorgons, minotaurs, amazons and other exotic creatures from the realms of Homer's Iliad. Add chariots, swordsmen, magic spells, and a host of non-playing characters to the mix and you should have a great game.

Sadly, it's not that simple. Invictus' biggest flaw is that it fails to capture the magic of the mythology. It may be an okay strategy game, but Olympian it's not. Characters that say: "Let's get ready to rock and roll" before they go into battle hardly help the game's credibility.

Graphically the game's okay, but you never get to see your character and other units are quite small, which can make battle sequences confusing.

E-mail: peter_eley@herald.co.nz