For Honor Beta Review
I finally got my hands on one of my most anticipated games of 2017, For Honor! I tell you, as someone who dedicated my life to martial arts, I couldn’t be more excited and nervous to play. Seeing videos of the game’s combat system in action is what drew me in, and I had high hopes. More than 30 hours into the beta I am not disappointed. Combat is the core of For Honor and thankfully it is the best part. Surprisingly it’s far more in depth than I had originally thought. Each warrior has unique controller motions that closely resemble fighting game commands and combos. This is what makes each warrior different and sets them apart from the rest of the cast. At first, the game’s combat is a lot to take in. Using the right stick to position your weapon to correctly block the angle of your opponent’s attacks is tricky at first, but once you become more comfortable it’s ultimately rewarding and easy to understand. As a martial artist myself, the combat system is genius, and really gave me a feel of being in my dojo. The animations are brilliant, giving an authentic combat feel. Techniques of attacking and blocking all look proper from a martial arts standpoint and flow beautifully. Combat takes place in decent variety of modes. In the Closed Beta we were able to take part in 1v1, 2v2, and the popular Dominion 4v4 game mode. I spent most of my time in Dominion, enjoying the chaos of being on a battlefield. This mode is essentially like domination in your typically shooter, but with a bit of a twist. Your army constantly has a flow of soldiers charging down the center of the map, fighting to take point B. I did encounter a number of glitches here. Most of them revolved around the ladders. Being stuck in the air until I was slashed or pushed by another player wasn’t fun! This only happened a couple times when multiple people were trying to get up or down the ladder near the top. It didn’t really affect my enjoyment, but hopefully this will be fixed in the final release as it took my out of the action for quite some time until someone came along to free me. I spent the rest of my time in the 1v1 mode. I also found this highly enjoyable. Coming from my fighting game background, it was very useful for learning my warrior, like training mode, as well as giving an intense dueling feel. In the other modes, when the game becomes 2v1, it becomes a slash fest most of the time, with the two teammates just mashing attacks to kill you. They can hit each other, but the damage is very little or non existent. As of right now it’s more beneficial to just keep attacking with your teammate in that situation. It’s harder to block the attack spam. This could easily be fixed with friendly fire doing more damage, including possible team kills. After the game’s end they offer you currency and loot. Armor and weapons for your warrior. All of these change your appearance and stats making each warrior fully customizable. Overall the game is looking very promising so far! It’s a fresh take and unlike anything in gaming we have ever played. Combat is fresh and new, and I feel that’s what will make For Honor stand out from the rest. I can’t wait to get back into the Open beta coming up and writing a full in depth review when the game releases on Valentine’s day!
