Play This Now: Mount & Blade

If I had to create a list of things that I enjoyed in games the top entires would doubtlessly include big, stupid powerful revolvers, dynamic and easy to use cover systems, and shooting people in the face with a crossbow while on horseback. I realize that last one sounds a bit esoteric, so thank god for a game like Mount & Blade. It has been a long time since I last played this developing indie action/RPG, it has grown quite considerably, and impressively, during the interim as they inch ever closer to version 1.0, and it's more fun than ever. The game begins with creating a character and then you are unceremoniously dumped into the game world on horseback, free to do what you please. Want to roam the countryside looks for bands of murderous nomads to put down? Go ahead. Feel like training and defending a small village from a group of bandits? Sure, Seven Samurai it up. And if you're like me, you'll turn around and pillage and raze it yourself. Want to wander from city to city trading different goods trying to maximize profit? You should probably be playing something else, but you can still do that too. The beta is free and does contain the full game up to this point, but without purchasing a license limits the characters you create to reaching level 8, at which point you will have to create another. But even then you should find more than enough to do with multiple characters and playthroughs.

Link, Mount&Blade download page at Taleworlds.com.

-K.