Yesterday 5punk.co.uk was ten years old and I wrote about some of the games we’ve played and peoples’ memories of them. In celebration we played some games last night – lots of us did, maybe twenty at one point. In order to get all those people together we had to find games we all had, and it comes as no surprise that those games were all first person sh0oters. Maybe it’s because they’re easy to pick up because they’re mechanically similar, maybe it’s because they’re convenient to drop in and out of with any number of players. Either way, shooters are so popular among 5punkers that today they get their own article.
Tag Archives: Chivalry
Happy 10th Birthday 5punk – Shooters
Posted in General
Tagged 10 years, 5punk, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 3, BEEF, birthday, Call of Duty, Chivalry, CoD2, CoD4, CoD:UO, Counterstrike, Joint Ops, Planetside 2, shooters, source, SWAT 4, Tactical Intervention, tournament
Friday Diary: Intermission
Today’s diary is late, you may notice. This is a sign of things to come. This week a new player will spawn in the game which is my life and that will put pays to both Frigames and diaries for a while. I’ll be back though.
Posted in General Gaming
Tagged Berserker Burlesque, Chivalry, Dota 2, gaming psychology, Hedgehogs, Porno Guess Who, Velour Eggs
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
In writing a review of Chivalry: Modern Warfare I have a few issues to deal with. It raises the question of what makes a game good versus what makes it enjoyable. Surely they’re the same thing, some may say. Well okay, ‘good’ is a subjective word so maybe they’re right, but in terms of quality they don’t necessarily sit hand in hand, and this is especially true. When it comes to the games 5punkers like this is even more true. Allow me to explain.
Chivalry is a fairly simple first person, round-based, multiplayer combat game. That’s nothing unusual, and it follows in the footsteps of many greats like Team Fortress 2 with various game modes and no particular overall metagame. Of course there are many not-so-greats in this somewhat oversubscribed genre too.
So why am I reviewing Chivalry and not one of the many others? To begin with, it narrows down its field of competitors by being all about melee combat. There is a ranged class, but combat is centred around swinging heavy and often sharp pieces of metal at your opponent. There aren’t too many multiplayer games around for that, and before I fall into the trap of trying to make comparisons I’ll admit that I’ve not played any of the others. Something I have noticed about the odd single player game I’ve played which tries to handle this subject though is that the controls are usually akin to jousting with fork-lifts.
The rounds come as the usual fare: free-for-all, team deathmatch, capture the flag. There’s also a popular objective mode based on medieval sieges, which is quite good. It doesn’t add up to a huge amount of game though. The variety of classes and weapons, along with even more class-specific weapons via unlocks, is good, and each weapon has a slightly different feel, but it all pretty much boils down to hitting the other guy with something.
The actual act of doing that is a pretty tactile experience. This is in part from the very intuitive controls which map both mouse buttons and scroll wheel to different ways of swinging the weapon. They vary in the specifics, but always come down to a compromise of speed, range and power.It might not sound a lot but it really makes if feel like you’re handling a weapon rather than just clicking to poke a stick.
On top of that, parrying will slow your opponent’s next attack and leave you with a slight speed advantage, so every combat is a little tactical exchange of blows, and every blow counts when it only takes two or three for a kill. Visually too, the combat will jar your view and disorientate you. Your weapon will connect satisfyingly with the enemy, and if you get a kill there’s a fair chance the limb you hit could come off or shatter in a spray of gore and bone.
The combination of a creative game mode and a fun combat system isn’t quite enough to make a great game. This is where the 5punky review deviates from what I would write were it a straight review for Joe Average Gamer. There are extra little touches added to Chivalry which bump it from a brief distraction to a 5punky classic.
The brutal combat and slightly silly physics is satisfying but also very amusing. You can’t fail to grin and the goofy flopping corpse of your opponent when you get a kill. There’s also a key bound to scream a war-cry, which adds another layer of ridiculous to the whole thing as knights charge and clash to the constant backdrop of “YEEEEEAAAAAAARGH!”
The real deal breaker for us though is the discovery of low gravity servers. I don’t know if it’s a mod or a mutator, but either way it is howlingly funny. The game automatically plays a terrified scream if you fall a certain distance, but in low gravity this happens every time you jump. The effect is that you find yourself in the middle of an acrobatic ballet of screaming, flailing knights. Limbs arc away trailing bloody sprays and people jab desperately at each others’ crotches. It turns the ridiculous into the sublime, and for that it won 5punk’s Game of the Year 2013.
It might not be a game that gets played every week, and when it does we might not play it for more than an hour or so, but Chivalry is so side-splittingly funny to play that it will be a 5punky classic for years to come, up there in the hall of fame along with Call of Duty: United Offensive and Burnout Paradise.
Friday Diary: Chavalry
Last night’s gaming was a little hectic and confusing. Did I say that last week? I can’t remember. This was because we branched off into various team games, so Teamspeak descended into various overlapping conversations and exclamations. This isn’t uncommon among 5punkers, and while we could easily remedy this by going into different channels that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Either way, last night’s theme seems to have been the futility of teamwork. Oh, and axe running, but I’ll get around to that.
Posted in General Gaming
Tagged Axe running, Chivalry, Dota 2, Payday 2, Playdate 2, teamwork
Friday Diary: Ear Testicles
The Friday gaming has been picking up the pace lately. The catalyst seems to have been a discussion about lurkers, or rather less frequent forumites, and anything we could do to be more inclusive. This led to a few mid-week games which have had a pretty good turn out, and although I can’t see a direct link it seems to be bringing out some old faces. The other side of that is that with more people, something like thirteen at one point, we struggle to find games everyone can play. Either someone doesn’t have it, or some don’t want to play it, or there’s too many for it. It’s a relatively good problem to have though, and there’s nothing stopping us splitting between several games.
Posted in General
Tagged Bad Music, Burnout Paradise, Chivalry, Counterstrike, Ear Testicles
Friday Diary: Grimmie’s Cock
Oh why do I always go for the rude titles? I remember stating that I had my diary title several times last night, but in the cold light of day only Grimmie’s cock stands out in my mind. This is the problem with my diary, I have a rather selective memory and so undoubtedly leave out hilarious moment, and also take a guess at how things happened and who said what. C’est la vie, just don’t believe everything I write.
Posted in General Gaming
Tagged Chivalry, Dota 2, Grimmie's Cock, Just Cause 2 MP, Sniper
Friday Diary: Pork Calamari
Last night’s Frigames introduced no new games – a free weekend for Chivalry gave us the chance to introduce it to a few low-G medieval combat virgins, and after that we defaulted to more Dota 2. That’s good though, it gives people chance to catch up with what’s going on, especially since not everyone can make Frigames all the time.
Friday Diary: Lady Bits
Last night’s gaming proved to be very much an archetype of 5punky gaming; fraught with disaster and conversations for which I daren’t google a title image. We had a good showing though, and while the gaming produced nothing particularly groundbreaking it gives me an excuse to set the background noise level from which the other shenanigans that appear here can be based.
Posted in General Gaming
Tagged bears, Chivalry, Dota 2, Lady Bits, Path of Exile, puns, Ursa
The Friday Diary: Wuuuuaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgh!
This friday’s gaming was relatively quiet, around six of us playing over the course of the night. You may be able to predict how the night ends from the trend of previous weeks, but we were a little more varied in the run-up last night. I’m glad, because it’s given me the chance to write about the most recent addition to the list of 5punky games.
Posted in General Gaming
Tagged Bumout, Burnout Paradise, Chivalry, Cthulhu, Dinosaur, Dota 2, Screaming