10 games that capture the spirit of Christopher Nolan's latest

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is gobsmacking audiences and critics with its grand retelling of Homer’s epic poem. It’s a unique, personal-yet-immense work of cinema that’s dramatically different from most other movie-theater fare in tone, visuals, setting, everything. So how do you keep the Odyssey feeling going? You might have a wait until the next available 70mm IMAX screening.

If your impulse is to turn to video games, good idea — but there are still fewer options than you might think. Surprisingly, ancient Greek mythology isn’t used as a setting for games as often as you’d expect. There are some all-time classics though, and there’s also a good spread of genres represented. Here we’ve picked out nine great Greek classics, plus a tenth game that has nothing to do with the era but has a strong kinship with Nolan’s movie in pure vibes terms.

1

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

Kassandra surveys a Greek vista

Ubisoft Quebec/Ubisoft

This one’s a no-brainer: it’s right in the title! Ubisoft’s open-world adventure is set during the Peloponnesian War (circa 420s BCE) and features historical figures like Euripides and Socrates, but it also makes frequent excursions into myth; you’ll encounter the Cyclops, Sphinx, and Minotaur in the game. There’s plenty of seafaring action too, like the movie. This is probably the biggest and most RPG-like of all Assassin’s Creed games, but it’s also one of the most likable.

Where to play: PS4, Windows PC, and Xbox One

2

The God of War trilogy

This classic series of action games by Santa Monica Studio began on the PlayStation 2 in the mid-2000s, and relate the god-murdering adventures of the perpetually furious Spartan warrior Kratos as he carves a bloody path through the ranks of the Olympian deities. They’re pretty lurid; the later Norse mythology games are a better match for Nolan’s mood, if not the setting. But their Greek mythology credentials are impeccable.

Where to play: A PS5 remake of the trilogy is in development, but you’ll be waiting a while for that. You can play the PS3-era remasters via the cloud if you have a PlayStation Plus membership. God of War 3 has a PS4 version, so it’s playable on PS5.

3

Hades and Hades 2

The best portrayal of the Greek gods in gaming, hands down, is found in Supergiant Games’ brilliant pair of roguelike action games. Sexy, squabbling, and vain, but also seductive, cool, and tender, they’re vividly drawn — and receiving their boons feels like an authentic representation of a worshipper’s relationship to the Olympian pantheon. The games themselves are razor-sharp classics.

Where to play: PS4 and PS5, Switch and Switch 2, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X

4

Titan Quest

A warrior shoots a bow at a monster on a beach among wrecked ships

Titan Quest is Diablo in ancient Greece. That’s it — that’s the pitch. It’s a good one, though. This is one of the longest-lived and sturdiest Diablo-style action-RPGs out there, still going strong on Steam after 20 years. The Olympian gods stand to one side while the player sets off to kill their predecessors, the Titans, who are escaping from eons of imprisonment and flooding the world with monsters. Quality hack-and-slash-and-loot action.

Where to play: Titan Quest: Anniversary Edition is available for PS4, Switch, Windows PC, and Xbox One

5

Age of Mythology

a top down view of a town stuffed with classical Greek buildings

The inspiration for Titan Quest came from this 2002 real-time strategy game by genre specialist Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. It’s a mythological spinoff of the Age of Empires series in which players take Greek, Egyptian, and Norse cultures from the Archaic Age, through Classical and Heroic ages to the Mythic Age. If you want to command Cyclops, Hydra, and Medusa on the battlefield rather than fight them, this is the game for you.

Where to play: There’s a 2024 remaster, Age of Mythology: Retold, available on Windows PC

6

A Total War Saga: Troy

Sticking with the strategy genre, but even closer to the substance of The Odyssey, is this 2021 spinoff of Creative Assembly’s historical strategy series. Based on The Iliad, it employs the Total War mix of turn-based empire-building and real-time battles. It’s not the best Total War game, but if you come out of Nolan’s movie wishing you could command troops as faction leader Odysseus of Ithaca, it will hit the spot.

Where to play: Windows PC

7

Apotheon

silhouetted Greek figures in a 2D game that looks like ancient pottery

This 2015 indie action-adventure by Alientrap is fairly standard Metroidvania-style 2D combat exploration. The plot, too, is familiar from a few other games in this list: kill Zeus and the Olympian gods, who have tired of humans and withdrawn their gifts from the world. (It’s a nice touch, though, that you’re dispatched on this quest by Zeus’ wife Hera in a fit of jealousy.) What’s really striking about it is the visual style, inspired by Greek pottery designs, with silhouetted, shadow-puppet-style characters moving across luminous, richly hued backdrops.

Where to play: PS4, Windows PC

8

Immortals Fenyx Rising

A flying Fenyx aims a bow and arrow at a hippogriff in a screenshot from Immortals: Fenyx Rising

We’re straying pretty far from Christopher Nolan’s aesthetic with Immortals, a colorful 2020 action-adventure by Ubisoft that’s heavily influenced by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s a fairly entertaining mishmash of Greek mythology in which we’re saving the gods, rather than murdering them, for once; the goal is to defeat Typhon, who has escaped confinement and robbed the Olympians of their powers.

Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

9

Spartan: Total Warrior

Now for a deep cut. If The Odyssey inspires you to play the part of a common soldier of the classical era, try this 2005 action game, the sole attempt by Creative Assembly to spin its historical strategy games off into a console action series. With one foot in history and the other in mythology, the game sees you play a Spartan warrior combating the rise of the Roman Empire with the help of Ares, god of war. It’s a pretty old-fashioned swords-and-sandals hack-and-slash game, but solidly entertaining; they really don’t make them like this anymore.

Where to play: There’s no compatible version of this game for modern hardware, so you’ll have to track it down on GameCube, PS2, or Xbox

10

Shadow of the Colossus

Shadow of the Colossus PS4 - Wander looks up at Gaius, the third colossus

And now for something completely different. Rather than the mythological Greek setting, Fumito Ueda’s classic adventure shares the tone and visual style of Nolan’s Odyssey: majestic and sorrowful, epic in scale and action, but with a cool, bleached color palette. It’s about a young boy scaling and combating a series of awe-inspiring stone giants for reasons that are left unclear. It’s also one of the greatest games ever made, and the only title on this list to offer the thesis that humans’ hubristic quest to kill and usurp the ancient forces of the world might actually be a bit of a bummer.

Where to play: The PS2 original, PS3 remaster, and full remake for PS4 are all brilliant