Spotlight: Age of Chivalry

If there is one thing fans of online fps gaming have come to expect it is that you will be carrying a gun of some sort. Whether you are fighting Nazis, evil aliens or terrorists you can expect that you will be doing your fighting with a machine gun or grenade in your hand.

So when I first heard about Age of Chivalry, I was pretty interested. A total conversion mod for Half-Life 2, Age of Chivalry puts you in the thick of battle in a setting nearly identical to the Europe of the Medieval period. Swords, maces, crossbows and spears are your trusty tools here.

And unlike other "medieval" games there is no hint of magic or fantastical monsters to be found - just sweaty peasants in chainmail beating each others' brains in. Very refreshing considering your main alternatives are beating up aliens, terrorists or dragons. Check out the official game trailer below:

This is a free mod, meaning you only need to own Half-Life 2 to play it. The current version is 1.1 and, while still technically in beta, has very smooth gameplay with a handful of well-designed maps. In fact, the maps are connected to each other in what Team Chivalry calls "Story Driven Multiplayer."

Our unique way of allowing the players to continue writing the story depending on the outcome of the battles. You can siege the shore and push them back into the deep forests of their lands. If your strength is great enough you may write history and destroy their lands and lay siege to their town’s castle to completely destroy your enemy through a sequence of map cycles leading you through the epic storyline.

While the game features maps with connected objectives and you can choose from three classes with varying equipment setups, this is no RPG, however. Rather it is very similar in spirit to Team Fortress 2 - another big bonus for me (and a lot of other players, I would wager).

AoC was also chosen as an editor's pick for the ModDB 2007 Editor's Choice Awards. Below you can see why from the actual gameplay:

OK English-speakers, this video is a German game tutorial but you can get the picture of how the actual gameplay works. This has become one of my favorite Source Mods and if you are a fan of realistic medieval wargames it will definitely become one of yours also.

• Age of Chivalry Home Page
• Official Steam Group
• ModDB Page