Figuring it to be just another rushed cash-in for an upcoming movie (albeit one I was eagerly anticipating), 300: March to Glory for the PSP is instead a fun hack and slash game that won’t necessarily test your gaming muscles, but it does act as a worthy companion to the hit movie and the Frank Miller graphic novel from which it was spawned.

In fact, Miller’s fingerprints are all over the game, from the mostly static cutscenes which look like they came straight from the graphic novel, down to the unlockable video interviews with the legendary writer and artist. That, my friends, is a good thing, because no matter what realm you’re in, the more Miller the better.

Think I’m a bit of a fan? Well, if you are like me, 300 gets high marks because of its faithfulness to the source material as well as its addition of not only a little backstory, but of the Battle of Plataea, which took place after the demise of the 300 Spartans and which was just beginning as the film ended.

Yet while these extras add something to the game for fans of the 300 franchise, if you have no interest in the film or graphic novel and are just looking for a new game to check out, be warned that 300 is not a game that will win any awards for innovation. Armed with a sword, spear, shield, and eventually two swords, you hack your way through seemingly endless waves of opponents, all the while earning enough ‘kleos’ to upgrade your gear and add new moves to your arsenal. Smart upgrading is essential as you move on to some of the later boss battles, but the new move combinations are fairly useless when some button mashing will do the same trick with less aggravation.

One new wrinkle to the tried and true formula is the addition of the phalanx, which puts your Spartans in an interlocked line which moves down a linear path mowing down enemies and trying to get to the end of the path before its collective life drains. I give the developers credit for trying something new, but from the first wave of phalanx action - where some careful blocking followed by slashing topples an elephant – you can see that what was good in theory didn’t really make it in practice.

Boss battles are sprinkled throughout the game with varying levels of difficulty and different strategies needed for each one, from a raging rhino to final boss Mardonius, though once you figure out the patterns to beat some of the bosses, the process of beating them can become tedious and drawn out as you chop away and try to stay alive.

Visually, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy in terms of the character models or the environments, but as mentioned earlier, the cutscenes are top notch for what it’s trying to achieve when it comes to the graphic novel look, and there is plenty of gore for fans of such stuff, with beheadings and dismemberments getting tracked on a statistics board.