E3 2011 Hands Off: King Arthur II & Magicka PvP

Paradox Interactive is not the biggest company in the video game world (in fact it’s the very first time they have had a booth at the E3 trade show) but their line up of incoming titles is pretty impressive for those who love strategy gaming and quirky ideas.

At their E3 2011 stand I was able to take a look at King Arthur II, which is under development at Hungarian studio Neocore Games, and aims to expand on the mix between turn based strategy and real time tactics that the first game in the series delivered.

The sequel is an evolution and not a revolution, which means that the team has taken the weaker aspects of the game and improved them while expanding on the successful ones.

The strategic map is now bigger, covering all of Britannia, and allows for more options linked to development of provinces and for more text adventures for heroes.

There are also more units, deeper backgrounds for heroes and the development team is also thinking about tweaking the way heroes upgrade and develop new skills.

The battlefield are also bigger and while the control point mechanics is still there now all bonuses are applied across the entire army of a player, making control of the battle space more important than ever and more challenging, considering that new flying units are now in play.

The entire atmosphere of the game is now darker and the narrative of the game seems to be more developed.

If King Arthur II delivers the strategy the upcoming Player versus Players expansion for Magicka, coming for free, bring the quirky, with players now able to challenge each other to magic duels.

The update includes game modes like Krietor’s Tourney, which is based on a set of rules used by a fan of the game, but also more traditional ones, and the host can tweak a number of settings to change the nature of the battle.

The team at Arrowhead says that more content will be launched after the PvP mode and that they are also thinking about taking the game to the Xbox 360 (I actually played a little using a controller for the Microsoft home console).