Do you know why Army of Darkness rules? Chief among the countless reasons I can think of is that Ash retains his boomstick even though he’s been displaced out of time. Everyone around him is doing battle against the forces of evil with swords and bows, while he’s lighting demons up with his shotgun. I love baffling anachronisms like that, and this new game Kingmakers seems like a genre-bending heap of ‘em.
The trailer for Kingmakers, which was announced earlier this week, is making waves for how utterly insane it feels. Opening on a dramatic monologue speaking of a savior, you’re led to believe it’s your average medieval city-builder with real-time simulated battles—when a truck seemingly hops through time barrels through a horde of medieval foot soldiers. By the time the driver hops out of the car and pops a guy with a pistol, my jaw was on the floor.
Kingmakers follows a hero from an apocalyptic future who travels to medieval England to change the trajectory of a war to save their own time. According to the Steam page, players can expect to “engage in runs as a fully real-time simulation with thousands of soldiers fighting at the same time.” Though your enemies will have weaponry respective to their time, you will have access to everything from pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenades and accompanying launchers, and more. Watching the player take out a bunch of guys on horses with the equivalent of an AK-47 took me out. The greatest moment of the trailer though? Seeing an attack chopper do a bombing run on those poor, unsuspecting English knights.
And to be clear, while Kingmakers might not be the city-builder it leads you to believe it is, it is in fact a strategy game as well as a bizarre third-person shooter. Oh, and when it releases later this year, you’ll be able to play it cooperatively with friends. The scenes we’re about to get out of this game are going to be mind-melting.
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