I guess the following little anecdote can best explain my feelings for the game For Honor:
When Ubisoft announced the game’s closed alpha, I signed up immediately. For Honor is one of the games I saw at E3 that really interested me, and I wanted to take it for a spin. Of course, since I am older than video games, I promptly forgot about it and went on with my life.
Last Friday, I received an email saying I was invited to the closed alpha. Instead of being excited, I felt horrified. My first words after receiving the email were indicative of my mood months after my excitement: but I’m trying get geared for raiding in Legion!
It’s no secret to the Digital Crack crew that World of Warcraft: Legion has been my part-time obsession lately, and any attempt to pull me away from it has met with failure. Since this was a closed alpha, however – and I could invite three friends – I put down Legion and played For Honor. I invited my Digital Crack crewmates; you can watch video of our trials and tribulations here.
The fact that I was able to play through the whole weekend without yearning to return to my WoW gear grind is a testament to For Honor’s potential.
As I was playing the closed alpha, another game from days gone by kept coming back to me: Bushido Blade. SquareSoft’s 1997 PS1 gem is present in the game’s stance system. Similar to that game, you have three stances to choose from, and different weapons benefit from different stances. Parries and counters are also present here. Where For Honor trumps SquareSoft’s entry is that its combat is more fluid and forgiving. With Bushido Blade, just about every hit is a one-shot kill. You can one-shot an enemy here, but either you have to be a bad-ass assassin or your enemy has to be a dolt.
The combat is absolutely engaging here. Standing off against an opponent is tension-filled and exhilarating. The satisfaction of parrying a killing blow and pulling off a combo for the kill is extremely satisfying. Hell, I’ve found a small measure of satisfaction from being killed after a hard-fought duel. It was very small, however, and it was quickly replaced by a desire to slash my opponent’s ancestors.
It is this combat which carried the majority of the closed alpha. There were three modes present in the alpha: Duel (1v1), Brawl (2v2), and Dominion (4v4). Duel and Brawl are basically the same thing: Stand off against an opponent, duel them to the death. The only difference in Brawl is that if you can dispatch your guy, you can go help your teammate dispatch his guy.
Dominion has two teams of four fight over three contested capture points. One of the points is constantly fought over by grunts, and you can help capture by cleaving through the opposing fodder. While there’s a bit more strategy involved in Dominion, it still boils down to facing an enemy in battle and trying your best to turn him or her into a kebab.
After a weekend of this, you would think I would be burnt out on it. There was no other variety. Only two of the promised four variants of each faction – knight, samurai, and viking – were present, and the novelty of trying out a Orochi or Berserker faded quickly. The alpha was basically about the repetitive combat.
Still, the combat kept me going. Every duel was just as riveting as the last, a testament to the combat system. It was repetitive, but it was engaging. I did begin to fade in my enthusiasm on Sunday well before the 8PM EST conclusion, but I still came away impressed.
Were there any disappointments? Hell yes there were, and they revolved around connectivity issues. It was hard to get a group together on occasion, and frequent connection resets and kicks plagued my time with For Honor. Since this is an alpha, it is to be expected and forgiven, but I would be remiss not to bring it up.
The alpha still impressed as-is. I hope to try out later builds to see how the game progresses. Until then, I shall return to Legion. Hey, those armor pieces ain’t gonna upgrade themselves!
