Valheim, which is Old Norse for "Valerie is home", came out in early access last month to the roars of Viking-likers everywhere. It is a survival game about building a hut in the woods and then protecting that hut from friends who want to erect a gaudy temple next door, totally ruining the rustic ambience of the whole glade. I guess there's some monsters to fight too. But will any of this matter if you do not make it through cold nights full of dangers, and lean days without food? Just where does your Valheim viking fall on the bar chart of survivability? Here are the 8 toughest Vikings in PC games, a healthy exercise in comparison and shame.
]]>Vikings are cowards. Same goes for knights and samurai. If you're a competent fighter in For Honor, then you might have clocked that defensive moves often beat out aggressive ones. Right now you can merrily block away until your opponent exhausts themselves, then go at 'em as they wheeze. This may have had something to do with my skill level, but counter-attacks seem a tad over-strong, too.
Great news! All of that will be worse soon! The upcoming Core Combat update revolves around emboldening players, introducing a load of tweaks that incentivise aggression. It's not out 'til August 6th, but come watch this vid and and do some thinking about swords with me.
]]>After watching the trailer a bajillion more times, I am extremely excited for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. It's been around 48 hours since the announcement and I cannot possibly retain this state for much longer. By the time the Christmas-ish release date rolls around I will either have exploded like a poor little meat balloon, or gone full circle and lapsed into a coma. Like the engines of the Enterprise, she cannae hold - definitely not for around six more months, anyway.
Thank god that Vikings are an enduring and popular theme for games, then! I can inoculate myself against disaster by playing a few of these existing ones while I wait. Such is the versatility of Vikings that they pop up in almost every genre imaginable, too. So if, like me, you are already on the edge of your seat (and that seat is in a longship), here are some recommendations for varied and quality video games that will get you prepared for Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
]]>War never changes, but it has lost a little weight. Ubisoft made every character tiny in For Honor for April Fools' day, and they have yet to reembiggen. They still whack at each other with normal-sized weapons though, making things very anime. Me and Reddit have been having fun.
]]>I've not kept up with the plot of For Honor, a game where buff lads and lasses chop each other's limbs off with elaborate pointy sticks. But as Ubisoft's brawny fighter enters its fourth year, they're putting down the swords - if only for a little while. While Year 4 might be the "Year of Reckoning", Season 1 is entitled "Hope", and sees all three factions holding nervous truce. Oh, they'll get to decapitating soon enough, but for now, there's a platter of shiny gear to be earned, through a new battle pass arriving next week.
]]>Hey you, I heard your breath smells like a fart. What are you gonna do about it? Fight me!? Excellent. I was hoping you’d say that, because I’ve put together a list of the 10 best fighting games on PC, and it would be fantastic if you came and had a look, gave your thoughts, and maybe elbowed me in the teeth while you’re at it. Finally, a decent reader willing to dropkick me. Matchmaking is hard.
All right, let’s take this outside, where the top 10 fighting games are waiting. How exciting.
]]>When For Honor first pummelled its way onto the parapets of PC gaming, it was frustrating. The blow-by-blow of this ahistorical brawler presented a tough fighting game with all sorts of dastardly antics thrown in. Ledges, spikes, traps, ladders. But the gamey infrastructure around it was a disaster. Disconnections, lag, crappy matchmaking, and that all-too-common stinginess when it came to post-match rewards. A rusty pair of shin guards? Gee, thanks.
Today, it's better. The stinginess never really went away, but most of the other problems have. Leaving a solid fighting game about booting people off high walls.
]]>Google held another one of their Stadia Connect conferences today, and this one was meant to be all about what games you'll be playing in the "scary" cloud come November. Sure enough, there were new Stadia games aplenty announced this evening, with the biggest addition being Cyberpunk 2077.
To help keep track of them all, here's a list of every Google Stadia game confirmed so far, as well as which games are coming at launch, which ones will be arriving a little bit later, and which games you'll only be able to play by subscribing to one of the special Stadia publisher subscriptions.
]]>Firstly, it’s free on the Epic Store right now, and free is good. Secondly, For Honor is an axe-swinging good time for all involved, even those plummeting to their death from a comically high castle wall. It is zero pennies from today until next Friday, August 9. However, you’re only getting the base edition, so no Shaolin monks or creepy mystics for you, at least not at the start. Those are the unlockable characters. But if you scab together enough steel, the in-game currency, you can eventually muck about with those brawlers. Whether or not you get that far, you should give this brutish slice ‘em up a go. Mordhau has all the swordists in a loved-up tizzy at the minute, but I reckon For Honor is better. Let me break down why.
]]>While normally a hellish day filled with corporations toying with hearts, April Fools has some perks, like this week's Rainbow Is Magic event in Rainbow Six Siege. Ubisoft have given the Plane map in the gritty tactical squad-shooter a Lisa Frank makeover. Hot pink unicorn and butterfly-themed operators and a handful of hard plastic toy soldiers fight for control of the VIP (Very Important Plushie), as you do. This event runs for a whole week, up until April 8th, and there's a collection of hot pink-with-sparkles gear to permanently earn. Below, a trailer for this gleeful nonsense.
]]>Last year saw For Honor reborn to stand with Ubisoft stablemate Rainbow Six Siege, and today marks the third-person team brawler's first major update of 2019. A war-torn harbor map is available for all to play around, but the most interesting half of this update is the Black Prior hero, available in both boy and girl forms. A dark knight that straddles the gap between Visigoth and Modern Goth, liking black leather, looking moody, they fight in ways that their more chivalrous friends probably tut disapprovingly of. Take a peek at both the map and character below.
]]>For Honor may have bounced back from the brink, but that hasn't saved it from being subsumed into the UbiGame collective, becoming an Assassin's Creed game for the holidays. Ubisoft's clever online take on the fighting game genre is largely transformed by the For The Creed event until January 10th, now featuring armies of Assassins and Templars fighting in the Animus. The event features a time-limited spin on Dominion mode, where players aim to hack through enough of the enemy grunts to draw out the rival commander, including AC characters like Ezio Auditore (yay!) and Cesare Borgia (boo, hiss!). Take a peek at the trailer below.
]]>Ubisoft's For Honor once looked like a write-off, but the competitive sword-o-brawler has somehow pulled itself together. Today's expansion - Marching Fire - adds a bundle of new content to the game, a lot of it paid, but some major upgrades free for everyone. All players (regardless of version owned) will get access to a castle siege playmode and a slew of graphical improvements, but a new solo/co-op mode and four new Chinese-themed characters remain the domain of people who put down cash. Below, a launch trailer, featuring stabs, stabs, stabs and the occasional thwack.
]]>Ubisoft’s melee-dramatic, vaguely historically inspired For Honor has always been a speculative thing, mashing together unrelated factions for the fun of it. With the pending release of the Marching Fire expansion, they’re taking it one step further and asking: what if knights vs. samurai vs. Vikings, but now everything is burning? See for yourself below:
]]>"It does not matter how slowly you go," said Confucius, "so long as you do not stop adding stuff to For Honor." It's a good thing Ubisoft have always been keen followers of eastern philosophy. Despite its problems, they refused to stop working on the Vikings v Knights v Samurai brawler. We heard at E3 that the upcoming Marching Fire expansion will add four new fighters from China and a 4v4 "Breach" mode which sees players storming a castle. That isn't due out until October 16 but Ubi have announced they're having an "open test". PC players will be able to impale each other with the new characters for free (plus breach some castle walls) from September 6-10. That includes folks who don't already own the game.
]]>UBISOFT: Soldiers! For Honor is not a game. It is a quest for medieval prowess. You will spend hours honing your swordsmanship, weeks sharpening your wits. Only the most ferocious survive in this ahistorical spike pit of combat, a land torn asunder, soaked in flame and dread and ash. You will train for months, tempering yourself in this sharp-edged gauntlet. You will dodge, limp, parry and perish, and steadily climb the ladder of fate until, one day, you too will become a warrior. A master. Unbeaten on the battlefield, feared by many, respected by all, the steel-born menace you were destined to be. Yaaaargh!
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Ubisoft's conference included everything we expected, from a closer look at Beyond Good & Evil 2, to confirmation of the leaked Assassin's Creed Odyssey, to the now traditional (and delightful) Just Dance dancy party. If you don't have time to watch the conference in its entirety however, here is a showcase of the trailers that were shown and links to the associated news from Ubisoft.
]]>Brutal medieval axe grinder For Honor is getting four new Chinese warriors as part of an update called Marching Fire, Ubisoft have said at their E3 announce-a-thon. It's also getting a new 4v4 game mode about besieging castles, as well as a to-be-revealed "endless" singleplayer mode and some equally unknown two-player co-op stuff. The game's cut-down Starter Edition is free for keepsies right now too. It was all announced with the battle pizzazz of a slow-mo cinematic trailer, which you'll find below. Stabby stab.
]]>Whatever your weapon of choice--plasma rifle, axe, M1 Garand, or raw capitalism, baby!--you may well be able to dabble in your favoured violence this weekend for free. The full versions of XCOM 2, For Honor, Call Of Duty: WWII's competitive multiplayer (okay, so not really the full version), and Offworld Trading Company are all available in free trial weekends for the next few days - mostly through Steam.
]]>When you stack it up against just about any other major multiplayer game, medieval murderfest For Honor seems a little esoteric, but Ubisoft are still sure that the game has legs as a competitive scene - it just needs to remind the players how to run. In a major free update rolling out for the game tomorrow, For Honor is expanding with a series of official training missions, a complete in-game glossary of terms and a freeform arena mode to test classes and weapons in.
]]>Not to beat around the bush, but multiplayer medieval brawlathon For Honor clearly jumped the gun with its launch last year. Only now does the game have its technical kinks worked out, along with dedicated multiplayer servers. Major improvements all told, but considered by many to be too little, too late.
Ubisoft aren't a company to give up so easily, and are attempting to draw some fresh blood into the melee with the release of a cut-price Starter Edition of the game, offering access to all the game's modes at the cost of increased grind required to unlock additional characters.
]]>We'd previously reported that among a swathe of improvements coming to Ubisoft's struggling multiplayer brawler For Honor was support for static, dedicated servers, completely replacing the public hosting system that the game currently uses.
We now know exactly when this game-changing improvement will be landing, and it's not far off: You'll be able to butt heads with the Vikings, Knights & Samurai in a much more stable fashion on February 19th.
]]>I've been playing the closed beta of Conqueror's Blade, a lavish medieval warfare MMO from a team led by assorted Halo alumni. It arrives with eerily similar timing to that other big-scale medieval game Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but entirely multiplayer rather than singleplayer, and is all about bundling together hacky-slashy third-person tropes with a massed-army siege mentality.
Total War has made its own attempt to provide a boots-on-the-ground view of its enormous historical skirmishes, but 2005's Spartan: Total Warrior wasn't exactly a crowd-pleaser. Here's a fresh take on playing as a general who gets their hands oh-so-dirty.
]]>Rainbow Six Siege might be Ubisoft's rising star in the multiplayer scene, but they're not quite ready to let go of For Honor yet, despite technical troubles and dwindling player-counts.
Due to start this February, the Season 5 update for the game (dramatically named 'Age Of The Wolves'), will bring a lot of tweaks and changes to the game, says Ubi, including some heavily reworked move-sets. Most importantly, though: it'll be adding dedicated server support.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>Get ready to grab your great axe, long-sword or naginata and set some heads a-rolling, because Ubisoft are finally testing dedicated servers for their melee brawler For Honor. Everyone, including people who don't own that game, can download the test client now then start helping them with that from 1pm GMT on Thursday, when you'll be able to slash around in the usual multiplayer modes but on dedicated servers rather than wonky peer-to-peer ones. They'll stay up until 1am on Monday the 18th.
If you do own the game and you've been getting annoyed at unstable servers, then I can see why you might not be interested in testing out some new, differently unstable test-phase servers. Maybe just sit back and hope that Ubisoft make the server infrastructure switch early on in 2018.
]]>There goes my head again. Rolling along the ground like a wet turnip. The ahistorical three-sided war of For Honor has always been a tough battleground. During a recent free weekend, it became a conflict not only between Vikings, Samurai and Knights, but between practiced veterans and absolute newcomers. I’m somewhere in between. A mediocre warrior returning to the fighting pits after a long absence, a little slower and flabbier than before. Two new heroes were also added to the game recently – the bloodthirsty Shaman and sword-happy Aramusha – but, as with previous additions to the roster, they don’t feel like enough to save a game with a barrel of other flaws, whose player numbers have dropped significantly since launch. I marched back into the decapitating grounds to try the new maps, modes and murderers, and spoke to the game’s director about its problems.
]]>Three-sided brawler For Honor recently added two new heroes. So I’m back in the gladatorial pits, trying to revive my previous dishonourable form. But it’s tough. The game itself still has problems and my own rustiness only makes things harder. The veterans of the community seem happy, however. They particularly like the brutal execution animations recently added. So much so, that a troubling trend has emerged whereby players have begun making their own suggestions for deadly final blows, using the medium of MS Paint.
]]>The hosts of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, have accidentally overdosed on EA games this week, and they don't like it. You could say they're in a ... critical condition! Ha ha ha. But seriously, don't buy the new Need For Speed.
]]>Has medieval ménage à murder For Honor undergone that renaissance everyone keeps predicting yet? The whispering wisdoms of the internet told me it would follow in the footsteps of Rainbow Six Siege – somewhat underwhelming and skittish when released but stronger and more confident many months afterwards. But if that’s destined to happen, Rich hasn’t noticed. Maybe two new killers, a couple of fresh maps, and a new game mode will help. I take a lot of pot shots at Ubisoft, but I’ll say one thing for ‘em – they really love #content.
]]>Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they've been changed for better or worse.
The burly girls and boys of For Honor might make a big show of their bravery, grunting and screaming their way to ignominious defeats and glorious victories, but their brutal hand-to-hand fights aren’t actually for hono(u)r. They’re for “Renown Points,” for “Steel,” for “Reputation,” for “Feats,” for “Salvage,” and for “War Assets.” They’re for a whole mess of currencies and awards that, six months after release, make For Honor feel as cluttered and clumsy as it was at launch.
This is a Ubisoft game, after all, so unless Hono(u)r can be capitalised, counted in blocks of 100, and displayed on an overly busy user interface, it’s hard to see where it would fit. There’s so much superfluous stuff going on already, with an overarching war map, TV-like seasons of conflict, and a complicated upgrade system obfuscating the core of the game: a historically improbable three-way thunderdome between samurai, knights, and vikings.
]]>Honour is one of the daftest justifications for killing, but I suppose Ubisoft didn't want to call For Honor [official site] 'Because Video Games'. If you want to stab a load of men because video games, this weekend you're invited to have a crack at For Honor for free. You can now download and play the full game -- both campaign and competitive -- to stab fools until until Sunday evening. Our Brendan didn't really dig it in his For Honor review but Michael Johnson told us it had promise. Which was right? There's only one way to find out. Fiiight!
]]>Stop me if you've heard this one: a Gladiator and a Highlander walk into For Honor [official site] and, without a third character to catalyse a joke, simply stab each other to death. Thank you, thank you for your rapturous applause. It's the way I tell 'em. This ha-ha-hilarious joke will come to life later this month with the launch of For Honor's Season 3 update, adding the Gladiator and Highlander along with two new maps, new gear, and 1v1 duel tournaments. En garde! Touché! More details are this way!
]]>You know what they say. "Better a late fix to bring back some fans to your waning multiplayer medieval fighting game that shouldn't have been built this way in the first place than never." What? That is what they say. Whatever. The vikings and samurai and knights of For Honor [official site] will finally be getting dedicated servers, says Ubisoft. It's a big deal for stabfans because until now the firm-but-fair-ish ahistorical brawler was running on a peer-to-peer networking system, and although the 1v1 mode of play remained fairly stable this way, larger game modes have been plagued with infuriating connection problems since the time of its release. Hopefully, the dedicated servers will finally fix some of those problems.
]]>Update: The year is finished, which means you can now read the final list of our favourite games of 2017.
2017 has already been an extraordinary year for PC games, from both big-name AAA successes to no-name surprise indie smashes. Keeping up with so much that's worth playing is a tough job, but we've got your back. Here is a collection of the games that have rocked the RPS Treehouse so far this year.
We've all picked our favourites, and present them here in alphabetical order so as not to start any fights. You're bound to have a game you'd have wanted to see on the list, so please do add it to the comments below.
]]>If you're planning to play a spot of For Honor tonight or perhaps a little Rainbow Six Siege, er, revise your plans. A lot of Ubisoft's online servers and services are down today for reasons unknown, disrupting games and causing trouble. Ubisoft say they're investigating and want everything shipshape but if your Monday date night involves ninja fights, you might want to formulate a backup plan.
]]>Ubisoft's staborama For Honor [official site] has kicked off its second season of competitive play with an update adding two new maps and, initially only for season pass holders, two new characters. The sneaky Shinobi and stompy Centurion will become available to other players on May 23rd, but all stabmen are invited today to murder in the new Temple Garden and Forge levels. Alongside all this is a big ol' update with changes including rebalancing gear, fixing bugs, and making levelling faster.
]]>Shinobi and Centurions will join the historical battlefields of For Honor [official site] when season 2 kicks off on May 16th, Ubisoft announced today. The Samurai faction's Shinobi is a nippy Assassin type armed with two sickles on chains (kusarigama, if you want to get technical), while the Centurion is a Vanguard/Assassin hybrid who fights for the Knights with a gladius. The update will also bring new maps, new gear, and a rebalancing of the gear stats system. Probably some other stuff too. Bits and bobs.
]]>Ubisoft's stabfest For Honor [official site] once again has all the maps that were in it at launch, seven weeks ago. Two of 'em were pulled due to performance problems, see. River Fort returned last week alongside the patch boosting Steel rewards and now High Fort is back too. Something about those Forts in particular was causing the most desync problems. I guess the game lacked fortitude. Fortitude. FORTitude. Like a fort. Like in the maps, which have forts and have 'Fort' in the name. FORTITUDE. FORTS. FORT. FORT. FORT. FORT.
]]>Tidying up some of the week's leftovers before we shuffle into the next... For Honor [official site] has launched an update reintroducing the River Fort map and boosting the amount Steel players earn by playing. (Steel is the virtuacash used to upgrade and customise characters.) And Ubisoft say they're going to start communicating a lot more about what's going on with the game.
]]>Put a progression system in a game and someone will try to game it. If it's a multiplayer game, that'll often be at the expense of other players' fun. That's how it's gone with Ubisoft's swordfest For Honor [official site], where some dastardly players have been 'AFK farming'. They rig their games to keep their character moving, to avoid being kicked for inactivity, so they can receive progress and rewards without playing. Which, of course, spoils the fun for other players. Ubisoft are now cracking down on that. They're given 1,500 of these 'AFK farmers' temporary bans and warnings to thousands more. Permanent bans may follow.
]]>Framed for murder, now they prowl the badlands, an outlaw hunting outlaws, a bounty hunter, a renegade, it's only the weekly Steam charts! These are the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.
]]>For Honor is everything Brendan says it is in his review - an often broken and bruising game that assaults your senses with indicators and split second decisions, as well as assaulting your sanity with frequent network issues and inexplicable matchmaking bugs. It's also my favourite game so far this year, thanks to a deliciously layered combat system that draws you in piece by piece while you learn, adapt and try to master the simple yet versatile brawling. Let me explain to you why it's great and why it urgently needs fixing.
]]>The murderfields of For Honor [official site] are busy - despite the god-awful networking – and it has become a place where all sorts of foul multiplayer deeds occur. It’s obvious now that Ubisoft called the game For Honor as a joke, because I have seen (and done) all kinds of dishonourable acts. Here, in handy visual form (warning: many GIFS!) are just some of the terrible or stupid things that can happen in any hard-fought battle. Things you can do to your foe, things you can do to your mates, things that can be done unto you...
]]>Blood for the blood god, it's only the weekly Steam charts! These are the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.
The debate has raged for an eternity. The infinite dilemma that has defeated even humanity's greatest minds.
Which is best: guns or swords? Today, I have a definitive answer for you.
]]>The menage-a-trois of murder and mayhem that is For Honor [official site] does a lot of things very well. You can be down to your last sliver of health, limping across a bridge like a deflated balloon and you still might manage to grab a giant knight in panic and throw him off the ledge. Victory has never felt so dirty.
But its matchmaking is a toxic dumpster fire and its user menus are a bubonic plague of mistakes and dumbfounding decisions. How in the name of the Pope did so much trash get through testing? Here is a rundown of how an evening with this medieval swordfest might go, which handily doubles as a list of all the things Ubisoft needs to fix.
]]>A hotfix patch is out today to For Honor [official site] to fix a few of those nagging bugs. These include problems with Easy AntiCheat errors, full screen problems, and a cracking bug that saw Steam Controller users kicked for being AFK. A bigger update is in the works, mind. This second patch will tweak the stabfest's balance, including buffing Valkyrie and changing guardbreak counters.
]]>Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it's only the weekly Steam charts! These are the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.
Warning: we have reached Peak Charts. Peak Charts warning. Containment about to be breached. Please evacuate the premises.
]]>There’s a scene in the History Channel’s Vikings where the protagonist, Ragnar Lothbruk, says he is “bloodsick” after a hard fought campaign. He’s maudlin, weary of everything. It’s as if he is coming down from a dark age combat high. Well, that’s sort of how For Honor leaves me feeling after a battle. Even if my team won, I’m frustrated and irritable at all the small deaths. That attack from behind by three other players. That shonky, crowded melee amid the NPC pawns. Those dozen cuts from a Samurai blade that I could have sworn I was blocking. All of it working together to leave me weary, sighing and bloodsick.
]]>Hey, you. You with the war axe slung over all three of your jacked shoulders. How's your stabbing going? For Honor [official site] launched yesterday -- our Brendan will tell you Wot He Thinks of it after a shower, when can type without his bloody fingers sticking to keys -- but the medieval stabfest has suffered a few technical problems. While Ubisoft poke at patches, for now they do offer a long list of workarounds (not fixes) for a number of problems, from controller problems to the game not even launching.
]]>'Til all are one, it's only the weekly Steam charts! These are the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.
It's one of those 'just copied and pasted all the HTML from last week' kind of weeks. This is GOOD because I am lazy but BAD because there is little new to say. Fortunately, I've brought a friend along with me this time.
]]>Wow! Talk about shameless cash-ins! Today is Love Day, the most heartfelt of our treasured corporate holidays, but how are Ubisoft choosing to celebrate this? By releasing For Honor [official site], a game whose ONLY connection to Love Day is that it lets you stab people in their love organs (the heart and the bits)! Wow! If that's love, please leave me off your Love Day card list! Love Day is a time for Valentines, Yann Ubisoft, not Vikings! The only samurai action you should see is harikissi. And the only 'knight' should be a long night of passionate handholding. I guess all Ubisoft love is money! Shameless!
]]>By the power of Grayskull, it's only the weekly Steam charts! These are the games which sold best on Steam last week.
It's all gone a bit 2015-2016 in here again, I'm afraid, but fortunately cavalry of a sort arrives in the pendulous form of some big ol' swingin' dicks.
]]>After a decade of paid DLC dividing multiplayer communities and menacing wallets, the state of affairs is still sorry enough that I mutter "Oh thank god, they've not totally muffed it" when I see a big publisher, y'know, not totally muff it. Ubisoft today detailed DLC plans for their upcoming stabfest For Honor [official site] and -- huzzah! -- they've not totally muffed it. Similar to Ubi's Rainbow Six Siege, For Honor will add new characters, maps, modes, and gear free for all players post-launch, but folks who buy a season pass will get new characters a week early.
]]>Knights vs. Vikings vs. Samurai stabfest For Honor [official site] will hold a four-day open beta test shortly before launch next month, Ubisoft announced today. From February 9th through 12th, all and sundry will be able to stab each other across a variety of modes. This announcement comes after a closed beta test last weekend and, er, a cheeky little leak giving the news away.
]]>Great Odin's beard, it's only the weekly Steam charts! That is to say, the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.
This week: new entries, old favourites, and a very dirty house indeed.
]]>Ubisoft's multiplayer swordfest For Honour [official site] is in the middle of a big ol' closed beta weekend, so I thought I'd stop by and check in with y'all. I'm not playing myself -- I'm not allowed near swords since a Dark Souls-inspired incident with a broom in the RPS treehouse -- so, er, how's it going? I know Alec enjoyed being a Viqueen in the alpha and I suppose I'm curious how For Honour stacks up against homegrown stabbers like Chivalry. For those not playing, here's a brief infoblast.
]]>Our Alec had a lark when he romped around stabbing knights and samurai as a viking (a viqueen?) in Ubisoft's sword 'em up For Honor [official site] and soon more of us will get a go. Ahead of For Honor's launch on February 14th, Ubi have announced a closed beta test will run from January 26th to the 29th - and you can sign up for a chance to get in. Murders!
]]>As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we're looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one - in the world of games at least - but, ever the optimists, we're hoping next year will be even better.
]]>I like Ubisoft's obsessive need to cram story into everything, not because their stories are good, but because their stories are required to justify some pretty odd concepts. For Honor [official site] pits vikings against samurai against knights in a game primarily designed for multiplayer melee, but of course there's a singleplayer and co-operative story mode which tells the story of how these various blade-fanciers came to fight one another. There's a trailer below.
]]>Oh my God, the Ladyvikings are awesome.
]]>If there's one thing I really don't like about E3, it's the expo's ability to make me feel old. "There's no way that was announced a whole entire year ago," is a phrase I've become accustomed to saying, and Ubisoft Montreal's upcoming hack-n-slash murderfest For Honor [official site] is the latest game to make me do so. Why? Well it's now got a release date and two new trailers 12 months on since its reveal. The first is a typically made-for-E3 story cinematic, and the second a more gameplay-y look at its single-player campaign with Vikings and samurai scrapping.
]]>It was Ubisoft's turn yesterday to report to their investors, and they laid out their release plans between now and March 2017. Those plans include the arrival of four games we know about - Watch_Dogs 2, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, For Honor - and, perhaps more excitingly, one we do not. That new game won't be a sequel but a "new AAA IP".
]]>I didn’t actually know Ubisoft were doing a sword-fighting game - I missed it in all the E3 noise. Seems a little bit niche for them in a way, but then again after making 98 different Assassin’s Creeds they’ve probably got the world’s largest archive of clashing steel sound effects, so For Honor [official site] makes a lot of sense.
]]>A viking, a samurai and a knight walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Is this some kind of videogame?" and the knight replies, "Yes. Yes it is."
For Honor was announced at the Ubisoft E3 event last night. Under development at Ubisoft Montreal, where 90% of the world's games will soon be created, it's a violent blend of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, War of the Vikings and daft-as-a-motorised-frog TV show Deadliest Warrior*. As a viking, samurai or knight, you'll run around battlefields attempting to gain control of key areas, fighting human opponents as well as hacking your way through AI warriors. Two videos await below - a glossy made-for-E3 trailer and some multiplayer footage with dev commentary.
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