Stephaine McIlwraith

Despite all of that, under the proper circumstances, this is still a genre that's very easy to pick up and play, which is perhaps the most important part as it ensures that years and years of gamers to come will find themselves drawn to this intriguing blend of strategy, skill, and luck, just as centuries of people have found themselves drawn to a game of chess.

From everything that we've seen and heard so far, it looks like gaming companies are doing just the same, as an arms race to acquire as many indie games as possible is about to get very heated. Just like there is still some studio executive who is kicking himself for missing out on The Blair Witch Project's profits, no gaming company wants to be the one who turned down the chance to have the next Minecraft solely on their system. Perhaps more than ever, the power in games belongs to the individual artists.

Even better, indie games can afford to lose. They are often low cost, low maintenance, high concept works that don't rely on reaching a certain figure to be considered viable, and as such they can throw caution to the wind and take some big risks while still making a profit off of even the most modest sales. That means they can also afford to remain loyal to a system like an undertaker with a debt to the don, as while they might want the money that can come with being a multi-platform release, what they need is the backing and spiritual support of a major company like Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo to get their games out there. A backing that is no longer lip service and is becoming very, very real.

If you followed Gamescon this year, you'll have no doubt noticed that the word on the lips of every Microsoft,Sony, and Nintendo representative was "indie." Whether it be Sony revealing that Minecraft, Rogue Legacy, and The Binding of Issac would be part of the PS4 family, linked website Microsoft unveiling a pretty daring new system to encourage indie development, or Nintendo showing that indie developers are fully prepared to make use of the unique capabilities of the Wii U, it became clear that both companies have suddenly realized that indies are no longer a niche market ran by eccentrics and snatched by the gaming version of hipsters, but a viable and exciting source of incredible new ideas, and creative final products.

They're unwilling to go out of their way to adapt major third party releases. They are painfully slow to adopt an indie market that could actually make good use of the Wii U's unique capabilities. They seem, at times, to be woefully oblivious to the current state of the game industry, and determined to turn the Wii U into a time machine that will make it 1987 again. They seemingly have a hero complex that drives them to be the only ones who make a game that turns it all around.

It wasn't meant to last though, as even though the 32/64 bit era only barely blurred the party lines, with every subsequent gaming generation, it became harder and harder to separate one system from another just by looking at the games on the store shelves. By the time that Peter Moore revealed a "GTA IV" tattoo on his arm at E3, the message was clear that Triple A titles had become too big and too expensive to only commit to one system or another and, outside of some in-house and privately published development teams, the idea of big name exclusives was a dying light in the night drowned out by the dawn of a new day.

Ideally it's the optimal situation for consumers. You buy a system, and you have access to almost every major game, with as few exceptions as possible. To me though, it's a sad thought, as I sometimes long for a time when there were an assortment of games I couldn't play because I could only afford one system. When that one guy in the neighborhood who bought the Xbox would show us all "Halo" and have us regret our PS2 decision (if only for a moment), or when N64 owners could stretch arguments with their Playstation rivals on into the morning by just dropping the name "Goldeneye" every now and then.

Chivalry is a medieval combat game that, for the most part, perfectly recreates the experiences of playing with and against your friends in a Braveheart style battle. Like Monaco did with the heist genre, Chivalry showed us that those years of wishing to participate in large scale medieval battles in video game form were not unfounded, as there is a visceral pleasure that comes with charging the field of battle with a large axe and watching limbs fly around you like leaves in the Fall. The enhanced focus on face to face combat drastically alters deathmatch dynamics, and forces you to create strategies applicable in few other games.

The action from the first episode hasn't left at all and if anything, managed to speed itself enough where you practically have to do a second playthrough just to catch it again. There are plenty of moments that could have been explained more and it's upsetting that they weren't in the short time it took to finish the episode. Things like Olivia's disappointment in finally meeting her hero and Lukas' role in Jessie's group of friends could have been touched upon a little bit more but the fact that they weren't makes me fear for future episodes. It leaves you with a, "oh, that was it?" feeling that should never be felt while playing any game, especially right when you begin getting into the action and quickness of it all. Hopefully, the third episode will capitalize on a few more important moments within the main character’s development and slow down a little in order to give everyone the attention that they deserve.