Mordhau, Warhammer Chaosbane & more hot games reviewed!
HACKING AND SLASHING IN THIS HIGHLY SKILL-DEPENDENT MEDIEVAL MELEE GAME. PC | US29.99 | mordhau.com
MORDHAU’S BASIC PREMISE is pretty simple. In the default Frontline mode, you take up arms as a rugged warrior from one of nine classes (or you can design your own) and rush into the fray in up to 32-v-32, objective-based skirmishes on attractive, realistically-structured medieval battlefields. Then, you probably die pretty quickly to someone a bit quicker or more experienced than you and respawn, hopefully having learned something to take forward into your next brawl.
Each clash of swords can look deceptively simple, but is actually highly complex in the huge variety of attacks, parries, and counters available to you. A well-scripted and straightforward tutorial will run you through the fundamentals, but it’s another matter entirely to execute the correct moves at the right time. It takes many hours just to start feeling competent, but the satisfaction of growing confidence as your execution improves is something no numerical progression system can really replicate. It reminded me a lot of Sekiro, in that I started out as an absolute scrub and eventually started to think of myself as a badass swordsman. I mean, at least sometimes.
It is a bit of a bummer that there’s not a lot you can do when you’re just learning the ropes and want to take a more relaxed, support role. There is an engineer class who can shake things up by deploying siege weapons and the like, but I often found my contributions in this area were relatively small and easily undone by the other classes. In other multiplayer games like Battlefield 5 and Overwatch, I can focus on reviving teammates or locking down a point if I want a little bit of a break from high-intensity combat, and Mordhau doesn’t support that particular playstyle especially well.
Archery, too, I found a bit disappointing. Mordhau has gone the route of making arrows very powerful, but very difficult to land a hit with. Drawing back the bow requires about a second in which your crosshair moves in a semicircle, making it almost impossible to aim, then gives you a couple seconds of a steady hand before you start to wobble and lose your aim. The projectiles themselves are fairly slow and experience significant drop-off after leaving the string. This comes across as very realistic, but not especially fun, and it makes becoming an even somewhat effective archer even more difficult than getting the hang of melee.
If you’ve got the patience and dexterity to take full advantage of its melee combat, Mordhau can be a real treat. Especially in the Frontline mode, slashing and stabbing across its beautiful and well-designed maps was really entertaining once I got my feet under me.