Clash of the Titans Review

Sam Worthington is very much the ideal alpha male lead for 2010. You can leave the greased up guns of Van Damme and the sizeable breasts of Schwarzenegger back in the 20th century.

The modern muscle man for Hollywood has to be able to grow a day's worth of stubble within minutes and perfect the steely stare of Daniel Craig as soon as the cameras start rolling.

If Worthington is anything to go by, you also have to find a knack of appearing in as many mediocre films within quick succession as possible.

But while its lead might be an example of how things have moved on, Glu's Clash of the Titans couldn't be much more firmly rooted in the past. Though it's not a side-scroller – it's view instead from the top down – this is a hack and slasher of old, with a few nods to the RPG genre thrown in for good measure.

In fact, there's more than a little of Sega's much-maligned Altered Beast about the goings on here, most notably because of the array of largely disgusting creatures and animals you're charged with taking on.

You move through each level taking your sword to absolutely everything you encounter. Killing each foe – which is usually a case of repeatedly hammering the '5' key – rewards you with credit which you can trade in for upgrades at the end of each stage.

It's here that the RPG elements come into play, your choices essentially determining just how effective your attacks are or how much damage you take when you're hit.

It's fairly light stuff, with the game thankfully not foraging too much down the points path. Instead, Clash of the Titans falls back on platforming staples, the linear levels coming with hazards aplenty and bosses that keep to set patterns of attack.

Anyone who indulged in this kind of play during those 16 bit years will view much of Clash of the Titans fondly as a result, but they'll also likely get tired quickly. There's nothing wrong with reflecting on the past but, much like the film itself, Clash of the Titans may have been served better in the long run by something a little more original.