King Arthur

Being a bit of an Arthurian Legend snob, I didn't expect to like the remake of the King Arthur movie. So I was surprised to find, that despite some pretty glaring missteps, the movie was a fairly enjoyable, ride through the Arthurian mythos. When I heard that a game was coming out based on the movie, I was expecting another Charlie's Angles shocker. What I got however was a game that, while it doesn't go to far to distinguish itself from the constant stream of hack-and-slash games on the market, was still pretty fun to play.

There are a couple of things about King Arthur that make it enjoyable. Instead of plopping you down as one character and forcing you to go through the whole game slashing up bad guys, King Arthur gives you a whole stable of characters to choose from and improve over time.

The game is also broken down into two types of play. You have your basic hacking and slashing, where you use three types of attacks, one defense and a special move to take down the attackers. In this mode you can also switch from your melee weapon to a bow. There is a horse-mode, which makes sense since the knights of the movie are legendary horsemen. In this mode you use your horse to knock down attackers, swing your sword as you charge through lines and generally fight cavalry-style through longish maps. The mechanics are you your basic hack-and-slash-fare, the single parry button isn't very effective, instead it's better to move away from attacks and the rush into openings hammering away on buttons until your enemy is dead. The bow attack, which is usable in both the melee and horseback modes, is a bit too powerful, but the game makes up for that by making you move incredibly slow. This prevents you from backing away from charging enemies and filling them with arrows.

The graphics are very impressive. The game makes big use of full motion video pulled directly from the movie. These video scenes then transition perfectly into computer animation which in turn becomes live action. It's a pretty amazing effect. The audio is also quite impressive, pulling the sounds of characters and battle straight from the movie.

The only multiplayer mode allows you to fight through the game with a friend at your side, which works out quite well, but doesn't really add much to the game.

Overall, this is a fairly middle-of-the-road game, offering Arthurian fans a chance to play through some pretty cool battles but doing little to attract more mainstream gamers.