Today I sat down with the World’s Strongest Game Journalist™ to play a couple rounds of Rage of the Gladiator ($3.99), a brand new Infinity Blade clone that first released in March 2010. Wait, whaaaa? I hear you saying, “But Bearded One, Infinity Blade didn’t come out until December 2010, this cannot be!" And you are spot-on my dear reader. You always were the smart one in the family.

Rage of the Gladiator was actually originally a WiiWare title that released about 9 months before Infinity Blade. We see so many Infinity Blade clones come and go around these parts it’s sometimes hard to keep it all straight.

Anyway, Rage of the Gladiator originally used the Wii controllers to simulate fighting, and that translates quite well to the touchscreen. It actually feels a lot more like Punch-Out!! than Infinity Blade, and its style reminds me a lot of Beast Boxing 3D that came out on iOS a couple of years ago. It’s also a whole lot of fun so far in the hour or two I’ve put into it, with sky-high production values and an incredible cast of unlockable characters to face.

I want to hurry up and stop typing so I can get back to playing, so check out the video below and if Rage of the Gladiator looks like it might be up your alley, you can get more impressions from members in our forums or just throw caution to the wind and grab it with the link at the bottom of this post.