How about an Exanima game, but in first/third-person? Well, welcome to Half Sword. Since it’s only a very early demo, there isn’t too much to it, but what is there is good. The demo also shows great potential for the future – if a game ever is made, that is (but let’s hope). After playing it for a few hours there is much to like. For example, how armor acts as armor and gives you protection, and that any form of melee feels deadly – even a spoon can be turned into an effective weapon. So, if you ever felt like killing a dude slowly with rusty cutlery, this is a game for you!
Now, what makes it fun is that it’s controlled by physics, and much like Exanima, you don’t control your character with pre-defined animations. Instead, you control through moving the mouse. Holding down the left button will activate the left arm, and holding down the right button controls the right arm. You can also hold down both, and depending on the weapon this has different effects. As you can imagine this allows for many different styles of fighting, from the classic board and sword to dual-wielding butcher knives for classic psychopathic slice and dicing.
This demo has one problem though, as I see it. Some weapons are way too light, which makes swinging the weapons like you are mowing the lawn the most effective style. However, fighting like that isn’t very fun, and feels more like cheating. It’s an easy “problem” to avoid, and beyond that, the physics-based combat is great fun and constantly leads to hilarious situations. I do wish the demo wasn’t restricted as it is. Now you have to work your way through the same kind of enemies to get to the more classic weapons every time you perish to a spear through the eye. It gets annoying when you want to try the cooler medieval weapons and armor.
I highly recommend giving the demo a go, since physic-based games are great fun, and I think this is the way to innovate and bring new things to gaming. And no, I have not forgotten that this has of course been done before through Die by the Sword from 1998, but that is an old title existing in a sea of traditionally animated fighting games since that was created. One more thing, I found the AI impressive, some of the movements felt pretty dynamic – how the downed people scramble to get away or try to get up from getting hit in the nogging. I also hope you are not squeamish!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 