Friday, April 22, 2005

Shit hot. This is one of those rare evenings that begins with vulgarity and ends on the field of medieval battle. Contained within the link is my reason for being unavoidably detained yesterday, gentle reader, and it’d be wise of you to make it your reason as well.

These days, we require our entertainments to offer billions of colors and special effects, but don’t let that deter you from giving this baby a whirl. It’s made by a two-person development team, a husband and wife who’ve crafted one of the uglier games I’ve played recently. Yet I sat spellbound for hours, the first time in a long while, simply because it was fun.

I’m partial to processed doses of the fantasy genre–something like The Lord of the Rings movie fits the bill quite nicely–but any more and my cerebrum conjures images of tacky medieval fairs filled with foul-smelling nerds dressed in plate mail. You can imagine those gatherings, I’m sure. Giant turkey legs. Jousts. Fairground workers talking with accents of indeterminate origin.

This game certainly strays into the area, but even so I paid ten bucks to unlock the full version within an hour of playing the demo. There’s something timeless about having a battalion of peons act upon your good wisdom and charge into the fray, blindly and loyally getting hacked to pieces. Now let’s talk about the game. You’ll find yourself sitting on a hilltop, horse pawing at the ground, watching your rabble of hired hands and misfits run into battle. You play the archer, shoot one of the bad guys off his horse, and then you put on your calvary hat and cut down some footsoldiers with a big honkin’ sword.

Hark! I’m unavoidably detained again.