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I've been playing a few games not called starcraft recently (but still some Starcraft!). I messed around with Scribblenauts unlimited (boring, mostly because instead of trying to find the most imaginative answer I just get the first thing that comes to mind and it's pitifully easy that way), CoD BLOPS 2 (the most unintentionally hilarious release all year), Dota 2 (which is dota and requires no explanation!) and Chivalry, as suggested by a few mates.

Ahhh chivalry. It's a good one. Let's write some things about it!

So Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is made by a group called Torn Banner studios who aren't very big or well funded but have made rather an exciting game. It's a first person medieval themed combat simulator, kind of like Skyrim except it's good. And there's no Dragon Shouts. You pick one of two teams, the Red guys (Mason order) or the Blue guys (Agatha Knights), one of four classes, a loadout for said class and then comes violence.

And holy crap this game is violent. Everything makes good solid thunks or meaty splats or metallic clangs which makes for satisfying feedback for you own plays Dying foeman whimper as they collapse or gargle as their throat fills with their own blood. Heads explode like watermelons and limbs go flying, it's ******* great! For 25 bucks the novelty value alone is almost worth it. The first few hours of play will mostly be spent admiring all the glorious, glorious VIOLENCE!

The main feel or emotion they capture in this game is confusion and chaos. A good combat should feel like this and Chivalry nails it perfectly. The map could be dark or shrouded in fog or raining so it's hard to actually see where the enemies are, and if you find a group then there's a huge scrum in the middle and there's blades flying everywhere and you'd best be careful because there's team damage in this game too and you'll squint to try and pick out which ones are friends or foes. The game is called Chivalry, but only in name, it's really about flailing wildly without really knowing what the **** you're actually doing. And that's fantastic! Sort of. Initially. Then it gets frustrating but don't worry you'll figure it out eventually.

One of the other finer aspects of Chivalry that because it's mostly about melee combat you have a few seconds to assess a situation and make a decision, which you don't really get in FPS games about shooting people because if you round a corner and you see 5 of them running at you there's only really one thing you get to do which is get perforated. In this game when a group of you encounters a group of them you get to enjoy a few seconds of weighing the odds before running forward or back. You get to pick which one you'll fight or whether you'll stay back and try and help out a teammate instead (2v1 in this game is really unfair for the 1. Don't be the 1), assessing if your weapon feels stronger against your target or if you'd rather just sprint around and try and hunt archers instead.

I mentioned earlier there are 4 classes and each one can be tailored to a playstyle you prefer. If you just wanna stay back and help teammates then perhaps a Spear equipped vangard is for you, staying out of reach of enemies and provided good assisting stabs. If you want to charge headlong into the thick of it then perhaps the tankier Knight with a Tower shield is ideal. If you want to pick away at enemies and choose fights carefully there's the nimble and light Man at Arms, and if you're a churlish, cowardly, dishonourable knave then the Archer exists.

The combat mechanics are the highlight of the game. It's extremely complex. See in a bad game like Skyrim you pick a weapon and smash left click repeatedly until you win. But if you try that shit in Chivalry, you're dead. Extremely dead. Like, prepare to see your head fly several metres from the rest of you dead. In this game each swing is about timing, there's a huge windup animation and a difficult to land attack animation, and even then your opponent will probably block it. And you need to hit him like 3 or 4 times, what the hell!? How do we kill anyone!?

Well we can bait out their attacks. A weapon with superior reach, like a spear, can start their wind up safely outside of an opponents range so when I get closer and they start swinging they are vulnerable and it's poke time.

We can wait til they swing, a successful block results in a frame advantage for us which makes it harder for them to block our counter swing.

We can get close. That spear equipped bastard? He's fucked if I pull out my quick short ranged mace and close the gap. He'll never be able to get an attack going and eventually he'll fumble his block and he's dead.

Maybe he's turtling behind his shield? No problem, just throw a kick to break his guard and follow up with a stab. Or try doing a jumping overhead swing to get around it, or try and swing an attack around the sides. If he's got his shield up he can barely see what's in front of him so maybe we can get him when he lets up, or just runs out of stamina blocking.

Or this guy whose parrying everything. If we throw out a feint (an attack that you cancel mid animation) then he'll throw up his guard at the wrong moment leaving him extremely open.

Or... or you can be an archer and shoot things all day. And that's kind of fun because it's hard. hitting people with projectiles in this game is tremendously difficult, they have small models, the projectiles aren't bullets so you need to predict where they'll be which is hard because people circle around a lot when in a melee, the accuracy is incredibly precise so it's hard to place your cursor right and even then you'll probably just hit an ally in the back anyway. So Archer is actually quite fun because it's hard! And you're still kind of fucked once one of them gets in.

There's tons of other weapons, from extremely powerful maul to the elegant Longsword and wide arcing Zweihanders. It's fun! There's something for everyone here. There's even throwing axes. You know you've made a good game when you can kill people by throwing axes into their heads, but perhaps I'm a bit biased here.

I've basically described everything there is about this game and if any of it sounded fun then go off to Steam and buy it. It's currently a mere 25 bucks and with a steam sale on it might even get cheaper then that. It's still a bit buggy and sometimes clunky but it's an awful lot of fun.

Provided you're like me and you have a group of people to play with. Yes, definitely approach this one with friends (but isn't that all multiplayer games?)