So it appears that developers have gotten bored of making reboxed versions of linear corridor shooters for the age demographic of those who still need a cup of warm milk with a bedtime story at night in order to keep the boogie monster away, and instead have opted for the growing medieval bloodlust that’s been cultivating amongst young men since the first showing of Game of Thrones. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare started life out as a Half-Life 2 mod; something that’s generated so many decent games over the years that if it were to be paid royalties on them then it would have a global net worth more profitable than a gaming keyboard with more buttons than the Empire State Building’s elevator panel. I mean seriously, if modern gaming ideas are being born out of an engine that’s as old as Gandalf’s beard hair then there’s something seriously wrong with the way we’re doing things. It’d be like listening to old stories your Grandad told you about the war except Spitfires were replaced with fighter jets and the Germans replaced with the Protheans from Mass Effect. Luckily at some point during the development of this game the developers decided to use the Unreal engine which okay might not be the most modern of technological advances, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and we haven’t even got round to decapitating anyone’s heads off yet.
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is an online first person slasher – which sounds more like a gothic horror movie than a game genre but I digress, you turn the game on and you’re confronted with a server browser; which works about as well as a cinema seat without a cup holder, and that’s pretty much your lot. There is a tutorial section, something new players will pay tribute to heathen Gods for because honestly, the last time I saw a learning curve this steep it was like watching monkeys trying to invent the wheel except all they had is Duplo Lego bricks and had got sufficiently drunk beforehand. Aside from that there’s little else to do apart from get training, get into the fight or maybe do something productive with your life – except given the fact that both you have read this far into the review and I’ve actually written this far shows that neither of us hold the applicable social lives to do that; so we can just sit in our caves and continue to slash each other to pieces.
I never understood Starcraft before this moment because if you look at all the MLG players, they press about as many buttons as a paraletic drunk does whilst watching Bid TV on a Saturday night with a phone in one hand and half a doner kebab in the other. However, after playing this game you’ll see how that is actually possible because, as far as my knowledge goes, this game is the first game to create what I would call the ‘Mouse Crawler’. Some people may be familiar with keyboard crawler games – where you have to practically give birth to a spider on your arm in order to crawl your way along the keyboard to get all the keys pressed in time, but now they have invented the arbitrary mouse crawler – where your hands will be pressing buttons like your little knight’s very existance depended on it. Though your hand may be moving faster than a hobo on a penny you will actually be doing precise and calculated attacks because there is quite a strong level of control over them – you have the left mouse click to swing, roll the mouse wheel forward to jab, and backwards to do an overhead attack, then you can block with the right mouse button or raise your shield if you have it equipped. I’m going to try and not make comparisons between War of the Roses and Chivalry in this review but the controls in Chivalry are just far more adept – there’s no swinging your mouse round the mouse mat wider than the Titanic’s turning circle, and no hiding behind a shield, waiting for the enemy to be ‘open’ for a few moments to strike. I suppose it is up to personal preference which you prefer, however pressing buttons has always been much simpler than sending your arm on a transatlantic journey through time and space.
One thing you can compliment this game with is that it keeps the experience varied and fun – a priority that is sometimes questionable in certain games, and there isn’t really a game type that I specifically don’t enjoy. You have your standard Team Deathmatch, Free for All, Capture the Flag and King of the Hill game modes that we’ve all become accustomed to over the many years of playing them, but there’s also an interesting objective mode that has you breach a castle and then kill the royal heirs to the throne; I’m beginning to think that analogy of Game of Thrones is a bit too adept. I mean it’s nice to just casually dismember your friends and laugh about it, like some kind of strange sixteenth century torture party, but doing it for a reason always seems a better experience on the whole. This may just be feeding ammunition to the ‘video game causes violence amongst teens’ brigade, but they can high five a broadsword for all I care – the fact of the matter is that the game types offered are both enjoyable and challenging, and all credit to Torn Banner Studios for pulling it off on a game that should still be considered indie.
To elaborate on the previous point; this game is not without its flaws. You can sometimes find yourself riddled with more bugs than the London Zoo Butterfly House; though these have been improved upon drastically since the game’s launch. My biggest, and probably only issue with the game itself lies with the fact that health regenerates over time. I’ll skip the nostalgic reminiscing session about how the glory days of gaming had health as a pick up and gently wipe those tears from my bloodshot eyes, but having a game where one pollaxe to the face can mean an instant game over – paired with health that regenerates at a slower rate than a pensioner at a zebra crossing can end up with you being a walking dead man after one fight. If for example you’ve recently lopped the head off of one of your knighthood bretheren then you most likely have battle wounds, and if not then this drastically brings into question how you got your right arm muscle that responsive in the first place, and so are immediately at a disadvantage for your next bout. You can try and hide to wait for it to regenerate but nobody buys a game to play hide and seek where archers are aiming between your eye sockets and one swing from a sword can mean the difference between breathing and a blood sauce sundae.
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is, in my opinion, the best answer out there to a first person slasher. There’s not a lot to compare it to, but what it does it certainly does well; and if you ask yourself at the end playing if you had fun then the answer is innerently going to be yes. If you’re the type that turns off the television as soon as an episode of E.R. comes on then you probably will be detracted by this game and are better off at looking for something more like Hello Kitty Island Adventure, but for everyone else it’s about as much fun as you can have without getting arrested afterwards.