Spoiler alert: If you've played the popular iOS game Infinity Blade, you'll find Blood and Glory's style to be…well...exactly the same. However, Glu Mobile has put Blood and Glory in a different setting and tossed in a different "story line," and it's free.
For those of you who haven't tried Infinity Blade, the gameplay in Blood and Glory is pretty simple. First-timers can go through a five-battle tutorial, but the moves are basic: When your enemy attacks, you must block (by holding the on-screen block button), duck to the left or right (by tapping the on-screen left/right buttons), or parry (by swiping your finger in the opposite direction of your enemy's sword). If you successfully block, duck, or parry, your opponent will be stunned, giving you a chance to attack.
Attacking is as simple as swiping your finger across the screen to slash your opponent, and you can link multiple slashes together for combo attacks. You can also use a special-attack button, which charges more and more each time you successfully block, duck, or parry your opponent's blows.
That's pretty much all you need to know. Unlike Infinity Blade, Blood and Glory is an arena battler. It's set in the gladiator pits of ancient Rome, so the scenery rarely changes. Your opponents, naturally, become tougher and more difficult to kill as the levels progress, but you can upgrade your weapons and armor (and purchase potions) in the store. Because this is a freemium game, the store features two types of currency: silver coins that you earn by defeating enemies, and gold coins that you can buy for real money.
Regrettably, the store prices are pretty high--if you're serious about upgrading your character's equipment, you'll probably need to drop some real cash. In addition, with each battle your character earns skill points (though these are also available for purchase), which you can use to upgrade your warrior's health, attack, and defense stats.
Blood and Glory's graphics are, quite simply, epic. The arena has plenty of detail and depth, and movement is mostly natural and smooth. Unfortunately, such epic graphics require epic amounts of processing power and RAM, so older Android phones may suffer from lots of freezing.
While Blood and Glory is obviously modeled after Chair Entertainment's Infinity Blade--the graphics and controls are virtually identical--it's nowhere near as full-featured. But then again, it is free, unlike the $6 Infinity Blade. If you're a fan of awesome graphics and of the Infinity Blade style of gameplay, I don't know why you wouldn't check out Blood and Glory.
We tested this app using a Motorola Droid X running Android 2.3.3.
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