Tooth and Tail, the long-awaited return from Monaco creator Andy Schatz, saw its public gameplay premiere at PSX. Schatz may have finally nailed the feeling of modern, high-speed RTS play on a single controller, and he's done this by building the entire battle experience around a 'commander' system. If a character scores, that character disappears until the next score happens (on either side of the field), so there's always a hockey-styled power play in effect. Characters can also use destructive, rechargeable powers when defending. So passing the ball as a last-ditch save can still get them killed.)Īs a result, you will want to park some of your characters so that their control zones (which stay active even when idle) block certain lanes of movement. (Any player who holds the orb loses his or her control zone, making them vulnerable, and the zone also takes a second to return after certain maneuvers, such as passing the orb to a teammate. Each player controls a team of three characters, and each character has its own speed, superpowers, and 'control zone.' The latter is important: if one character grabs the orb and walks into an opponent player's control zone, represented by a colored circle outline, that character vanishes and must wait to return to the field of play. The whole field is visible at all times, seen from a top-down perspective. Do this enough times to score 100 points and you win. The object of Pyre is for your team to grab a single orb in the middle of an arena and get it to the opposing team's goal zone without letting your opponent do the same to you.

If you're a child of the '80s, Pyre will remind you of American Gladiators' mini-game Powerball if you're younger, think Halo's Grifball mode. I'm convinced they've struck e-sports gold.

For example, this meant I could park my keister at the booth for Pyre, the next title from Supergiant Games (makers of Bastion and Transistor). The PSX show floor was a sea of indie riches, and what's more, I had more time to play these games than at shows past. Nidhogg 2 shot right to the top of my 'anticipated in 2017' list after only a few minutes of play. The new weapons, including a quick-draw bow and a massive, Highlander-inspired broadsword, require on-the-fly strategy changes on both sides of the battle. Additionally, every time players die and respawn, they appear with a random weapon. Like the first game, Nidhogg 2 players win by running all the way to their opponent's end zone, but in one of the new arenas, the final steps are set off by a moat that can only be cleared with a jump.Įach of the three levels I fought in had some positional weirdness like this, and it made for some incredible showdowns. A new melee-rush move means unarmed combatants can surprise sword-wielders easily, while a new ledge-grabbing ability comes in handy in the game's more complicated arenas. Nidhogg 2's new aesthetic lends the two-player swordplay more weight and momentum, and as a result, the game feels more physical than the original. My tune changed within seconds of picking up the controller. What's with these squishy, Homer Simpson-like doofus characters? I loved the Atari 2600 simplicity of the original this looked dumb and unnecessary. The new version was only unveiled a month ago, and its initial footage, honestly, gave me pause. Top of my list: Nidhogg 2, a sequel to perhaps the best competitive fencing game ever made.

Nidhogg 2 trailer