So let’s be honest, the simple idea of having a Samurai, a knight, and a Viking fight is a little kid’s wildest dream. Now in For Honor, Ubisoft is making this dream a reality, and quite frankly, most of us at the multiplayer session pretty much fell in love with what we were playing in an instant.
After having Ubisoft put us in set-ups of 4V4, we were first introduced to the game through a quick tutorial. A tutorial, you say? That must’ve not been needed? Well, quite frankly, we would’ve been lost without it. Giving us a crash course of For Honor’s in-depth combat system, it’s quickly clear that the game is anything but a button masher, as we start by learning to defend ourselves from danger.
What about the game mode in the session in question? For this behind closed doors demo, we were put into a domination-type situation, where the first team to reach 1000 points and eliminate the entire enemy team wins. Sounds easy enough, but reaching the 1000 point goal isn’t as easy as it sounds. With the loss of one of the control points, the accompanying 100 points from the last capture go along with it, which creates situations where your immense advantage is nullified as the losing team turns the tide, which is sometimes well beyond one, if not both teams cross the 1000 point mark. This intensity was amplified by the intriguing map design, with our middle capture point B serving as a bottlenecked slaughterhouse that pretty much symbolized the heavy power struggle that was going on.
A lot of expectations have been set for For Honor as both a single and multiplayer game, but the game definitely moved up on my most-anticipated list for 2017 as the game delivered one of the most satisfying combat systems I’ve ever laid my hands on and one of the most satisfying multiplayer matches that I’ve ever come to play, which was honestly a high bar that I didn’t expect the game to pass beforehand.
For Honor launches next year, though Ubisoft has opened signups for the Alpha and Beta stages of the game that will take place up to the release.