Mirage: Arcane Warfare

This action based multiplayer game feels somewhat awkward in gameplay, but is incredibly over the top with displayed bloodshed. With most first person shooter games, combat is a fast paced, frantic test of reflexes, with the winner decided by who has the faster trigger finger or who got in that one lucky shot. That's not usually the case with Mirage: Arcane Warfare. Sure, there's plenty of action to be had in the game, but there's also a more methodic use of strategy. By giving players the ability to block both melee and ranged attacks, that action takes on a much slower pace. It's not just a matter of players thinking out their moves, though. The game actually moves at a much slower pace than most shooters. This is likely done out of necessity, with characters taking more exaggerated moves during attacks in order to give players time to react and successfully parry in response. Still, it's hard to ignore the fact that it gives the overall sensation that the characters are all moving through molasses, something made all the more apparent by the game's somewhat stiff animations.

What Mirage: Arcane Warfare lacks in speed, it tries to make up for in brutality. Much like Chivalry before it, Mirage doesn't shy away from showing the bloodier side of combat. In fact, the game features more carnage than you can shake a dismembered limb at. Just about every hit, every block, every spell results in some sort of blood splatter, limb loss, or other gory consequence. While this definitely illustrates the violence of the fantasy combat, it's done to such an extreme that it's almost comical. A character could stub its toe and end up looking the victim of a horror movie. It's a bit over the top, but then again, the game never seems to take itself too seriously to begin with. In some ways, that's probably the game's biggest flaw. The characters' attitudes and personalities feel out of place, almost as if this was meant to be a completely different setting but was forced into its Arabian Nights style at the last minute, and the developers decided to dump in buckets o' blood and a few wisecracks in order to cover this up and hope no one noticed. The end result is a somewhat awkward, but still strangely entertaining, experience that's at least a taste of something different.