Mount & Blade Warband, the (and I do not exaggerate) most highly anticipated game according to GDN readers (from the 50,000+ reads on the first interview with TaleWorlds about it) is ready to crest the horizon and bring multiplayer mayhem to the masses. Luckily, I’ve got connections and got into the beta today to check it out.

Now, Mount & Blade is not about amazing graphics, awe-inspiring sound effects, wondrous magic or mythical monsters. It’s about fairly realistic fighting and that’s what made it so popular the first time round. But the most asked for feature in the game wasn’t available, multiplayer. Well, it is now!

So what does everyone want to know? Has the gameplay and graphics changed? Nope! It’s certainly still Mount & Blade. The graphics are pretty good and the multiplayer can be so intense that you don’t even have time to actually look at them anyway.

I stepped into a large battle of at least 30 people (64 maximum) and got to work. I found out that I wasn’t so good at being a standard footman, because they feel a little underpowered when someone on horseback comes by and kills you with one shot. So I thought I’d try that. Fighting on horseback is hard and I wasn’t very good at it. But it’s like having a tank in an infantry war as you are so much faster and more agile than many. However, if you don’t steer properly you’ll run into something that upsets your horse and it will stop dead, which is what you’ll be as soon as the archers get a bead on you.

 No laughing at my game play, I was taking screen shots, doing the video and trying not to get killed. At least I succeeded at two out of three.

 Sorry about the sound. It was difficult to get the screen captures