The story opens on a Roman Empire seemingly in decline and spread thin across the world. Julius Caesar rules, but after suggesting the Senate is part of Rome's troubles, he turns up dead. Cicero points the finger determinedly at one of Caesar's advisors, who turns out to be the main character's father. His son, Agrippa, a centurion in the Roman army, and Caesar's nephew, Octavianus, see something wrong with this picture and set out to learn more, each in their own way.

Roman Empire drama has been a mainstay in entertainment for hundreds of years, and Shadow of Rome follows some familiar conventions. But the cut scenes that move the story along are well done, nicely paced and meaty. The acting is believable and the facial expressions and movements of the characters are silky smooth and realistic. And the depth of color and detail is a welcome departure from what most cinematics offer.

Agrippa, the centurion, is one heckuva fighter. Because of his father's disgrace, he ends up in the gladiator pits trying to stall the execution. The fighting is classic Capcom. Freeform, smooth, complicated without being cumbersome and visually spectacular.

There's a wide variety of weapons; from a standard gladius (a type of short sword) to enormous pikes and even the scattered limbs of fallen enemies. No, that's not a typo. The fighting is rather brutal, with blood spurts flying everywhere. Hacking off limbs draws more attention from the crowd and provides an emergency source of weapons if needed.

You'll have the ability to block, roll, throw sand in the face of an opponent and learn more and more complicated attack maneuvers as the game progresses. You can also throw weapons, and once you get good at it you might find yourself doing it whether it makes tactical sense or not. The juicy sound it makes when you hit the enemy is hard to pass up.

Your salvos (or special moves) will be tracked in the menu screen. Things like combos and special attacks are broken down into several pages' worth of different categories. Most of them will happen without any conscious effort, but after a while it's interesting to see what you haven't pulled off and make that a goal when you have the opportunity. And many special moves are complicated and difficult to use, which is one way the action keeps from being mindless gore.

Keeping with the gladiatorial theme, after a bloody beatdown you can raise your arms in triumph and juice up the crowd. If you do a good job, they might throw you a better weapon – usually a much, much better weapon. Does it make sense to imagine fans carrying a ten foot pike through the turnstiles so they can throw it in the pit? Well, no, but who cares. It's fun to see it happen.

Weapons do wear out pretty quickly, though. Every weapon has a health bar under its icon that quickly, far too quickly, goes down as you use it. It's hard to believe the Roman army provided new swords to a soldier every time they fell apart after killing four or five Germanians. But in practice, it results in forcing you to try more weapons, which is part of the fun, anyway.

Targeting can be a little dicey. Just when you think you're lined up for an attack, you'll miss when it seems like you should have connected. The enemy has this problem, too. It seems as if their attacks are either unavoidable, especially when they start racking up hits in succession, or too easy to dodge just by judging their timing. After a little getting used to, though, both issues are minimized.

Octavianus is nearly Agrippa's polar opposite. He's a whiny kid who sneaks around Rome trying to figure out what's going on with the murder investigation – and he's also your character when it's time to change the pace of the game. There are different levels of sneaking, of course, and he can move around in several different variations on the casual walk. He'll be your only way into certain areas that move the story forward, and he'll even attack the occasional unfortunate, but generally these parts of the game just make you want to get back to the fighting. This is not stealth action to rival Splinter Cell, not by a long shot, or even Metal Gear. But they aren't terribly difficult or bad, they just feel like lulls in the action.

And that action sounds as good as it looks. Metal clashes on metal and sounds perfect. When metal meets flesh, the meaty chunks sound as painful as they look. The crowd goes nuts when they're supposed to and in a busy, crowded arena, it's not just you that makes the blood flow. There's a conscious effort here to make you feel like you're a part of the activity, but you aren't the sole center of attention. There are other fights going on, and other fighters work the crowd just like you.

Gladiator fighting that looks great, is fun to play and keeps you interested and challenged – that's Shadow of Rome. The story starts off obvious, but there are plenty of twists and turns which result in a new take on the shady dealings of the Roman Empire. The only downer is the time spent away from the core of the game – the sneaking around sections that don't offer the same level of play. Even so, the meaty parts make it worth getting through the leaner parts, and for fans with interest in the period or graphic action, it's a keeper.