Tanks, Attack Helicopters, Bikes, and Medieval Castles, Because Why Not?

While in 3rd-person mode, you'll shoot, blast, set ablaze, and rain down hellfire with all sorts of modern-day warfare weapons, such as assault and combat rifles, grenade launchers, SMGs, pistols, shotguns, snipers, and more outrageous weapons. And yes, you can use swords, siege weapons, and most likely other medieval weapons.

The best part is that vehicles are indispensable in Kingslayer. You'll be bringing your own little apocalypse while driving motorcycles, armored SUVs, call in attack helicopters, and more. You can even call in airplane air strikes, Helldivers 2 style. Suffice it to say the arsenal at your disposal is not lacking, and if you run out of bullets, you can always hit them over the head with your empty weapon. If that's not enough, you can run over entire armies with your trusty pickup truck.

The game design features a realistic physics system that tries to simulate real destruction. For example, blasting castles with tanks slowly but surely makes them crumble and fall down brick by brick. You can even destroy entire villages just by driving your tank into every single building. Oh, and at some point, you're teleported out of the blue into what seems to be a Bioshock Infinite-like city of the future where a giant floating cat robot unloads hundreds, if not thousands, of human skulls.

The Redemption Road Games developer is no stranger to experiences that use many vehicles. Aside from their name, even their logo is a biker doing a wheelie while flailing a mace. That's because, in 2017, they released Road Redemption, an over-the-top motorcycle action driving game set in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by a Mad Max-like dictator.

Inspired by 1991's Road Rash, 1995's Twisted Metal, and 2006's excellent MotorStorm, the purpose in Road Redemption, aside from winning races while leaving your enemies in a pool of their own fluids, is to commit heinous acts like assassinations or robberies. With the payouts, you upgrade your character, bike, and weapons. On Steam, it barely costs 17 bucks and it's currently sitting at a comfy 82% Very Positive user score rating.

Now coming back to Kingmakers, the best part is that you can share the fun real-time simulated battles with up to three other players in the co-op mode. YouTube will most likely explode with outrageous gameplay videos when it comes out. Like Sam Raimi's horror-comedy, The Evil Dead, starring Bruce Campbell as Ashley 'Ash' J. Williams, this game also has a healthy mixture of comedy or parody and bloodshed.

In theory, Kingmakers should be tons of fun because you'll constantly be switching between the roles of an army general and a gun-wielding lunatic. It should be out sometime in 2024 on Windows only, at least for a while. After it rounds up enough money, you can bet dollars to medieval donuts that it will also come to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

While we wait for this (apparently) amazingly fun game, here are another few titles set in medieval times, albeit without any vehicular warfare.

Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord (2022) is a strategy/action RPG sandbox that aims to be a combat simulator. It costs 50 bucks on Steam and features era-appropriate combat. Chivalry 2 ($36) is another extremely well-regarded medieval multiplayer title, but only this time, you see things through your character's eyes from a first-person perspective. It takes time to learn how to perform combat well against other players, so have patience.

Kingdom Come Deliverance (2018) is undoubtedly one of the best medieval simulator experiences out there, and I highly recommend it. The second one was recently announced and should come out on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S toward the end of 2024. Other titles include A Plague Tale: Innocence and Requiem, Total War: Warhammer 2, For Honor, Manor Lords, or even the classic Age of Empires 4.