 |
| Ber-Sir-Kerkitten |
Real men wear a fedora
Also - Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior. Another one of those games I'd fucking love to review, but all people ever want to read about is World of fucking Warcraft. I'd love to review more action games, shooters, racing games and the like, but seeing as my #1 employer focuses mostly on RPGs and MMOs, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Ironically, more and more magazines, websites and publishers contact me, asking me to write for them (yaaay!) and then they always start off by telling me they're looking for an MMO guy. "You play MMOs, right?" I don't particularly enjoy MMOs, I've declined all work involving Elder Scrolls Online and WildStar, but unless an action game goes F2P, they won't let me write about it.
Figures - an MMORPG is a fucking pain in the ass to write about. You need to look into pvp, raids, community features, events, dungeons and a billion other things, meaning MUCH more research and actual play time and much crappier pay per hour than any action title. I mean, compare writing a review on, say, Call of Duty to writing one about Elder Scrolls Online. The average CoD campaign is a matter of five hours - if that. Add another couple hours of multiplayer and you know everything there is to know. Play an MMORPG for seven hours and you're what, level 25? Good luck writing that review. I'm in the fortunate position of being able to cherry-pick. Most freelancers can't - and being paid only for the amount of pages you write, rather than the amount of hours you put into an article hardly seems fair.
Naturally, if you're good at your job, reviewing an MMO will make you an expert at the game, meaning you can create in-depth guides about classes, dungeons and certain features, which are always in high demand and get rewarded rather handsomely. But doing so requires a certain amount of love and dedication towards the game in question. You can't just jump in, finish the whole game in one or two sessions, write your article and get paid all in the same week. So, all those publishers only looking for an MMO guy? There's your explanation.
Oh well. Just because I don't get paid to play Chivalry (yet), doesn't mean I can't still write about it for the heck of it. Also, moving pictures:
Hilarious. There's just something about a game that lets me yell SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA whilst launching a spear into some guy's eyesocket. Then I grab my sword, decapitate another guy or five and keep screaming the whole time, because screaming is important. What a great game!
Let's be honest here: We've all wondered who would come out victorious if you put a medieval knight, a ninja, a samurai, a Spartan, a pirate and a Viking into an arena. If you haven't, then you're an idiot and quite frankly, I want you to get off my fucking planet.
What makes this game awesome is its fantastic combat system. What looks like a lot of random hacking and slashing in the above video (it's my 2nd day, I'm a noob), is a surprisingly deep and complex mix of stabs, thrusts, feints and parries. You can cancel an attack in mid-swing, causing your opponent to parry thin air, then poke him in the eye with a surprise attack. You can speed up or delay your swings, causing enemies to mess up their timing. It's unforgiving and deadly - a single mistake can easily get you killed.
Of course you also get your usual amount of nerd rage and inflated egos. Other games with toxic communities, such as the later Call of Duty titles, let you disable text chat. Chivalry does not, as far as I'm aware. Basically, everything you successfully use to kill another player is OP/broken/for noobs/requires no skill. Which, ironically, speaks volumes for Chivalry's balancing. Spartans are fucking OP, ninjas are for pussies, Vikings are for noobs, knights require absolutely no skill - you get the idea. By that logic, Chivalry must be the easiest game you'll ever play. The fact of the matter is, though, that the classes are all decently balanced. The quick and agile ninja moves across the battlefield as a silent, stealthy killer, who gets to throw shuriken at the tap of a button, but he's also incredibly fragile. Knights make up the other extreme and can take large amounts of abuse, but they're slow, heavy and their crossbows aren't very useful, should you choose to go for ranged attacks in the first place. Pirates can deal devastating amounts of damage with their muskets and flintlock pistols, which, in turn, require an eternity and a half to reload. All classes feel unique enough to stand out on their own, which is good, because otherwise there'd be no point in featuring all those characters to begin with.
Deadliest Warrior's one big weakness lies in its crappy game modes. Ironically, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare was awesome in that regard. The original Chivalry features objective-based multiplayer battles. One team might have to slaughter the royal family, while the other team has to defend them. One side needs to protect a bunch of trebuchets, while the opposing side has to destroy them. You get the idea. This stuff is so good, because it gives both teams an incentive to stay and work together. But there is no such mode in Deadliest Warrior. Instead, you get pointless, mindless free for all deathmatches, team-deathmatches for up to six different teams, which may sometimes prevent you from playing the class you want, as well as the boring and frustrating 'last team standing', which rewards you for running away and hiding until everybody else is dead. No respawn on this one.
Modes like 'hold the banner' give teams more incentive to work together, as your side literally has to "hold" a banner in order to win, whilst annoying you with different limitations: The particular match might be limited to Knights vs Ninjas or, worse, Ninjas vs Ninjas, defeating the entire purpose of having six goddamn classes in the first place.
On the plus side there's the Unreal Engine 3. And that means solid performance, decent visuals and a fucking browser for dedicated servers and no stupid matchmaking system. Because it's not a damn console port!
Fighting animations aren't the most impressive ones you'll ever see, but it's incredibly satisfying to watch a pirate missing his shot, then turning to run away in a disturbingly Jack Sparrow-esque fashion. They also get to drink rum to regenerate health, so running isn't just funny, but potentially life-saving. Sucessfully playing each class also increases their rank, which unlocks more weapon types and customization options. This may seem strange to the younger ones among you, but competitive multiplayer games used to have free, purely cosmetic customization options, which didn't come out of a fucking paid DLC pack. It's a good thing!
Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior is brutal, unforgiving and incredibly punishing and difficult to get into. It's tempting to charge into the fray, repeatedly mashing the left mouse button, which usually results in your untimely death, as well as the deaths of your surrounding team mates, who will happily let you know how they feel about it. If you're looking for a game you just casually play for an hour or two after a long, hard day at work, this isn't for you. If you're willing to spend a few days getting your ass handed until you master the difficult combat system, the results can be insanely rewarding and oh-so cool-looking! There's nothing quite as fun as decapitating several enemies in one swing and reading those chat insults.
Besides - fucking server browser! Dedicated servers! No matchmaking! Customization! No damn bacon camo DLC pack for 3 Bucks! And no fucking zombies, nazis or terrorists! Now, if the developers would kindly add Medieval Warfare's best maps and game modes to Deadliest Warrior, I'd be so happy! Still, if you're looking for a very skill-based, old-school pvp experience, then Deadliest Warrior is an absolute no-brainer. Especially now that the Steam winter sale is on and the game is cheaper than pants.
-Cat
Oh well. Just because I don't get paid to play Chivalry (yet), doesn't mean I can't still write about it for the heck of it. Also, moving pictures:
Hilarious. There's just something about a game that lets me yell SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA whilst launching a spear into some guy's eyesocket. Then I grab my sword, decapitate another guy or five and keep screaming the whole time, because screaming is important. What a great game!
Let's be honest here: We've all wondered who would come out victorious if you put a medieval knight, a ninja, a samurai, a Spartan, a pirate and a Viking into an arena. If you haven't, then you're an idiot and quite frankly, I want you to get off my fucking planet.
What makes this game awesome is its fantastic combat system. What looks like a lot of random hacking and slashing in the above video (it's my 2nd day, I'm a noob), is a surprisingly deep and complex mix of stabs, thrusts, feints and parries. You can cancel an attack in mid-swing, causing your opponent to parry thin air, then poke him in the eye with a surprise attack. You can speed up or delay your swings, causing enemies to mess up their timing. It's unforgiving and deadly - a single mistake can easily get you killed.
Of course you also get your usual amount of nerd rage and inflated egos. Other games with toxic communities, such as the later Call of Duty titles, let you disable text chat. Chivalry does not, as far as I'm aware. Basically, everything you successfully use to kill another player is OP/broken/for noobs/requires no skill. Which, ironically, speaks volumes for Chivalry's balancing. Spartans are fucking OP, ninjas are for pussies, Vikings are for noobs, knights require absolutely no skill - you get the idea. By that logic, Chivalry must be the easiest game you'll ever play. The fact of the matter is, though, that the classes are all decently balanced. The quick and agile ninja moves across the battlefield as a silent, stealthy killer, who gets to throw shuriken at the tap of a button, but he's also incredibly fragile. Knights make up the other extreme and can take large amounts of abuse, but they're slow, heavy and their crossbows aren't very useful, should you choose to go for ranged attacks in the first place. Pirates can deal devastating amounts of damage with their muskets and flintlock pistols, which, in turn, require an eternity and a half to reload. All classes feel unique enough to stand out on their own, which is good, because otherwise there'd be no point in featuring all those characters to begin with.
Deadliest Warrior's one big weakness lies in its crappy game modes. Ironically, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare was awesome in that regard. The original Chivalry features objective-based multiplayer battles. One team might have to slaughter the royal family, while the other team has to defend them. One side needs to protect a bunch of trebuchets, while the opposing side has to destroy them. You get the idea. This stuff is so good, because it gives both teams an incentive to stay and work together. But there is no such mode in Deadliest Warrior. Instead, you get pointless, mindless free for all deathmatches, team-deathmatches for up to six different teams, which may sometimes prevent you from playing the class you want, as well as the boring and frustrating 'last team standing', which rewards you for running away and hiding until everybody else is dead. No respawn on this one.
Modes like 'hold the banner' give teams more incentive to work together, as your side literally has to "hold" a banner in order to win, whilst annoying you with different limitations: The particular match might be limited to Knights vs Ninjas or, worse, Ninjas vs Ninjas, defeating the entire purpose of having six goddamn classes in the first place.
On the plus side there's the Unreal Engine 3. And that means solid performance, decent visuals and a fucking browser for dedicated servers and no stupid matchmaking system. Because it's not a damn console port!
Fighting animations aren't the most impressive ones you'll ever see, but it's incredibly satisfying to watch a pirate missing his shot, then turning to run away in a disturbingly Jack Sparrow-esque fashion. They also get to drink rum to regenerate health, so running isn't just funny, but potentially life-saving. Sucessfully playing each class also increases their rank, which unlocks more weapon types and customization options. This may seem strange to the younger ones among you, but competitive multiplayer games used to have free, purely cosmetic customization options, which didn't come out of a fucking paid DLC pack. It's a good thing!
Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior is brutal, unforgiving and incredibly punishing and difficult to get into. It's tempting to charge into the fray, repeatedly mashing the left mouse button, which usually results in your untimely death, as well as the deaths of your surrounding team mates, who will happily let you know how they feel about it. If you're looking for a game you just casually play for an hour or two after a long, hard day at work, this isn't for you. If you're willing to spend a few days getting your ass handed until you master the difficult combat system, the results can be insanely rewarding and oh-so cool-looking! There's nothing quite as fun as decapitating several enemies in one swing and reading those chat insults.
Besides - fucking server browser! Dedicated servers! No matchmaking! Customization! No damn bacon camo DLC pack for 3 Bucks! And no fucking zombies, nazis or terrorists! Now, if the developers would kindly add Medieval Warfare's best maps and game modes to Deadliest Warrior, I'd be so happy! Still, if you're looking for a very skill-based, old-school pvp experience, then Deadliest Warrior is an absolute no-brainer. Especially now that the Steam winter sale is on and the game is cheaper than pants.
-Cat
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen