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524 - Warlords

Best Games - Warlords

Do you like pong? Yeah, that two player tennis type game that you play by twisting a knob.
Do you like Breakout? Yeah, that single player pong type game where you systematically smash a wall using a paddle and ball.
Did you have more than one other friend? 
Warlords is what you get if you combine all of those things. It’s pong, it’s breakout, it’s four players. It’s great.
In Warlords you control a small shield defending one of four castles nestled neatly in the corners of a regular TV monitor. A dragon sweeps in at the start of each game and let's loose a fireball. If the fireball hits a shield, it bounces off at fairly controllable angles. If the fireball hits a castle wall, it takes out chunks before bouncing off unpredictably. The harder the fireball hits, the more of the castle wall it destroys.
Each player has a button that lets you catch the fireball and, more or less, direct the angle that you release it. This lets you turn another player’s attack into a focused counterattack.
When a wall has a large enough gap in it, and a fireball makes its way inside the castle, that player is out.
The game continues until there is one Warlord left standing.
Warlords is so simple you will pick it up in seconds. By the end of your first game you will already have started to develop strategies and, more than likely, rivalries.
By the tenth game alliances will form. One player will be singled out as the strongest and everyone will gang up to take them out early. Deals will happen where two players will agree not to attack each other until one of the others is out. 
Warlords will turn friends into enemies and mild-mannered souls into monsters.
You will likely enjoy every minute of it.
Warlords is elemental and primal.
Warlords works just as well today as it did in 1980 because it relies on the one part of the video game experience that hasn’t changed. Other people.
There is an AI that you can play against, and it’s useful for filling out the board in the case that you are missing one of your four, but the game is ultimately unsatisfying when played against a computer. You need another person there that you can kick under the cabinet when they mercilessly toss fireballs at you.
Because it exists solely to facilitate a good time, Warlords is one of the best games. 


This post is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 by the author.
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