He took one look at me and my brother and thought he saw kindred spirits.
“Do you like cars?”
“Um…” we stalled.
“You should go and see Fast and Furious,” he said.
But we didn’t want to: we wanted to see Heath Ledger.
This is dark, gothic and grim - much more like the Batman films, actually.
Oh and most crucial of all: King Arthur is now the bad one.
You, Mordred, are the hero.
King Arthur: A Knight’s Tale is from Van Helsing studioNeocoreGames, which has made King Arthur before.
It’s much more like XCOM.
Missions involve running a party of four around smallish maps and fighting a few battles.
And when you fight, it’s turn-based.
The space around your heroes turns into a grid and you’re governed by available action points and abilities.
It’s very familiar.
After the missions, there’s a lot more to do.
“Nothing ever seems to stretch the player.
The Cathedral, for instance, is where your characters' heal injuries they suffer during battle.
And you get rid of these by sticking them in the Cathedral for a mission or two.
How long it takes depends on upgrades to the Cathedral.
What you choose has consequences, which is another area of the game I find appealing.
Choices all favour one of those things, and a little marker tracks your progress.
And, naturally, they all like different things.
It’s this area of the game, around the core, that I really like.
I appreciate the effort.
There are a few reasons why.
The moment to moment combat seems to lack sophistication.
It’s usually just ‘walk there, whack that’.
Nothing ever seems to stretch the player.
There’s never that feeling of having overcome, or having solved, a particularly tricky puzzle or battle.
In Knight’s Tale’s defence, it does get better.
But not that much more.
This trudginess is reinforced by the game’s technical struggles.
And I know “boss” sounds exciting but they aren’t.
They tend to look just like the other enemies.
Only one or two have stood out, and they died without much of a fuss.
It’s a shame.
Normal is too easy.
Then again, it could exacerbate an already slog-like core.
There’s things to like here.
They’re just one-on-ones but they mix the formula up a bit.
But there’s a creakier core that will be harder to solve.
Maybe watch Fast and Furious instead.
