Yesterday, Sega and High Voltage announced Tournament of Legends for the Wii and I had the chance to play a few matches of the fighter at a Sega event in New York City.

When Tournament of Legends was originally unveiled at E3 2009 under the title Gladiator A.D., the game was extremely bloody and aimed at a mature audience. The developers decided to ditch the title's gladiator focus and tone down the gore so they could reach a wider audience, enjoy greater creative freedom, and simply make the game more fun.

The game's story, which is told through beautifully drawn comic cut-scenes, begins just after the mysterious disappearance of Jupiter, the king of gods. The evil Thanatos has taken Jupiter's thrown and his power, and each of the game's mythological fighters wish to usurp it from him. The diverse cast of 10 fighters includes a gorgon, a stone golem, a valkyrie, a.minotaur, a gladiator, and a mechanical creature made of cog-like pieces.

Battles take place from a third-person perspective with the camera fixed in such a way that one player will be in the foreground while the other will be diagonally across from them in the background. Unlike the E3 demo, the character in the foreground will not be see-through. The placement of fighters is actually similar to a tennis game with each fighter being on different sides of an imaginary court. Players will be able to switch their battle positions (from foreground to background or vice versa) by using a slow, but unblockable attack.

The main combat controls are motion based. Vertical attacks are performed with a vertical wave of the Wii Remote, while left and right horizontal attacks can be performed with horizontal swipes of either the Wii Remote or Nunchuk. The motion controls were effective and made slicing at an opponent an easy and enjoyable task. Projectiles can be thrown using the C button, the Z button is used for blocking, and dodging is performed by using the analog stick while holding the B button.

During my play session, I mainly fought with the gorgon, who from here on out I will refer to as Medusa since she looked exactly like the infamous gorgon. Medusa, like every other character, has three special moves. Her special moves included temporarily turning her opponents into stone, and unleashing a set of slithering snakes. At one point, my opponent used a visually impressive special move that made a gigantic tree trunk erupt from beneath my character's feet.

As players battles different opponents in the single-player game, they will be able to gain weapons from fallen opponents who are in their same weight class. Each weapon adds an additional special move to a player's roster (for a total of four at any given time). Players also earn enchantments as they play, which are magical attacks which can make the swing of a sword cause a fiery inferno.

One of the more unique elements of the game was the strange ways battles were interrupted. Every stage of the game has a guardian who will unexpectedly wreak havoc on the two fighters. For example, at one point a humongous trident entered the arena and each player had to use motion controls to dodge its deadly and pointy prongs. Another level's guardian was the frost dragon who lay sleepily in the background until he unleashed his cold breath on the fighters. Between rounds, players also have the opportunity to regain health and body armor by playing a mini-game where each player must rotate the Nunchuk's analog stick while swinging the Wii Remote up and down. Accomplishing both tasks in unison reminded me of the childhood challenge of rubbing your tummy and patting your head.

Graphically, Tournament of Legends is a sight to behold. Character animations and special attacks are fluid and fun to watch, while the environments are filled with extensive detail. I was particularly impressed by a forest stage that had the roots of nearby trees poking through an ancient stone floor. In addition, there were demonic trees in the background that appeared to be a slight nod to similar vegetation in Mortal Kombat 2.

High Voltage's Art Director Matt Corso cited Virtual On, Bushido Blade, Soulcalibur, Smash Bros., and the Naruto fighting games as sources of inspiration. Similar to The Conduit, the controls will be extremely customizable and players will even be able to use the Classic controller. However, the studio did decide to forgo Wii MotionPlus support.

The special moves and character designs are extremely inventive and High Voltage showed yet again that their Quantum 3 engine can create some of most eye-catching visuals on the Wii. While it is too early to tell if Tournament of Legends has the kind of depth and replayability found in a fighter such as Soulcalibur to make it a worthy purchase, I can say that I had a lot of fun during my short time with it and that the folks at High Voltage seem enthusiastic about making it the best game possible.

Tournament of Legends will hit store shelves on May 18.