The longbow obviously lets you kill your opponent from a distance, but it takes time to draw, and arrows can be deflected back at you. The broadsword is powerful, and can knock an opponent's weapon from their hand with ease, but it's also slower than all the other weapons, leaving you vulnerable to a cheeky stab. Each of these has different strengths and weaknesses. There are three new weapons in addition to the standard rapier a broadsword, a dagger, and a bow. In the end, though, the art-style doesn't make much difference to how the game plays either way. The levels also include a smattering of obstacles that make fighting more of a challenge, such as platforms that give one player a height advantage, or pipes and grass that obscure both fighters from view. In some ways, its deliberate ugliness enhances the slapstick tone of the game, particularly the way the characters grimace and contort when run through by their opponent. My main concern with the aesthetic was how it might distract from the act of fighting your opponent. There's even a sequence where you fight inside the guts of a giant worm, with platforms made from viscera spiky ribs dangling from the ceiling. The backgrounds, meanwhile, are absolutely crammed with detail, from gothic castles with extravagant feasts laid out on the tables, to a city in the sky where you battle on cloud-tops while the setting sun is flanked by upside-down rainbows. The duellers are no longer sleek, monochrome silhouettes, but bug-eyed cartoon characters from a similar stable to Earthworm Jim or Ren and Stimpy. Now, however, instead of being a static, crudely-drawn row of circles that floats across the screen like a title-card, the worm is a grotesque, pulsating animated monstrosity with bulging bloody eyes and rows of rotting teeth.Įven before release, Nidhogg 2's art-style was the subject of considerable debate, and it certainly takes a while to adjust after the resolutely lo-fi approach of the first game. You still battle another player in a grisly death-race to opposite ends of the screen, and you're still eaten by a giant worm if you win. Underneath all this stylistic and systemic lacquer, however, it's still the same Nidhogg. Most surprising of all is the introduction new weapons to Nidhogg's madcap duels, that add considerably more permutations to how fights can play out. The number of stages has been expanded from a measly four to a meaty 10, while the new art-style is about as far removed from abstract as it is possible to get. In this way Nidhogg both demanded a sequel and didn't really need one, a collection of perfectly distilled systems in a package that was less than ideal.įor said sequel, developer Messhoff has done the only thing it could, complicate things. The game offered only four stages to battle in and rudimentary netcode that made playing online as much of a battle as the game itself. Simplicity was Nidhogg's strongest asset. And of course, the winner's victory lap was always unceremoniously cut short when they were eaten by a giant worm. Though a duelling game on the surface, Nidhogg was really a vehicle for emergent comedy, a slapstick simulator where you could win a fight be throwing a sword into your opponent's face, or simply by legging it to the finish line while your opponent raced after you. Yet while the rules were simple, the results were complex, unpredictable, and most of all, funny. Its fighting system comprised of a handful of moves, stabbing, throwing, jump-kicks, and rolls, all of which were bound to a single button. Nidhogg was defined by simplicity, a two-player duelling game where players were given two goals, kill your opponent and run to the end of the screen.
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