Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a pretty cool movie but imagine if it was a game (neglecting the crappy one that happened). You could run along walls, trees, and water all while doing kung fu. Well that’s what Age of Wushu is and did I mention it’s an MMO?
Age of Wushu not only has a unique setting of the Ming Dynasty in China but it does several things differently than most MMOs. There are no levels and no classes. Magic and martial arts moves will be acquired from Wuxia novels throughout the world. There are eight different marital arts schools in the game and you can pick and choose at any point what path you want to take your warrior down. If you thought all MMOs were the same, Age of Wushu is working very hard to change your mind.
My hands-on time with Age of Wushu was short—because E3 is crazy—but I played enough to understand what it is. Firstly, the game looks gorgeous. All the moves look pretty authentic, not to mention straight up cool to see being done in a game. You don’t realize how tired normal sword slashes are until you’re jumping around doing kicks everywhere. There is also a counter system in the game as well as in-air combat.
The controls were a bit weird at first because of the camera angles used for running up walls and the like. However, it is so cool to see and fun to do, I couldn’t care less.
Check out the US Launch trailer to get a taste of the action.
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I’m not huge into MMOs but Age of Wushu is doing a lot of very interesting things. It even has an endorsement by Jet Li. And who I’m I to say that he’s wrong?