For Honor UK release date, news trailers and hands-on: Closed beta starts this weekend

24/01/2017: For Honor’s closed beta starts this weekend, running from 26-29 January for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

If you’d like to get an early hands-on with the game, you’ll need to register via Ubisoft. The company has also released For Honor‘s PC system requirements, so if you’re planning on brawling with a computer you’ll want to make sure your rig is up to scratch.

To play the 1080p60 experience you’ll need:

• OS: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
• CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K | AMD FX-6350 or equivalent
• GPU: : Nvidia GeForce GTX680/GTX760/GTX970/GTX1060 with 2 GB VRAM or more | AMD Radeon R9 280X/R9 380/RX470 with 2 GB VRAM or more
• RAM: 8GB

To play the 720p30 experience you’ll need:

• OS: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
• CPU:: Intel Core i3-550 | AMD Phenom II X4 955 or equivalent
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX660/GTX750ti/GTX950/GTX1050 with 2 GB VRAM or more | AMD Radeon HD6970/HD7870/R9 270/R9 370/RX460 with 2 GB VRAM or more
• RAM: 4GB

For Honor: Everything you need to know

For Honor lets you play as one of 12 classes, split across three factions – Knights, Samurai or Vikings. It would be a great trans-cultural exchange, if the involved parties weren’t slicing each other to bits. To help you choose which of the groups you’d like to opt for, Ubisoft has released a set of videos outlining some of the playable characters.

First up is the Kensei, from the Samurai faction, who has a big ol’ sword and likes to chop off heads. Next up is the Viking’s Raider, who has a big ol’ axe but not much in the way of armour. Finally, there’s the Knight’s Warden, who has a lot of armour and likes to take long walks along the beach.

All three of the classes will be playable during the closed alpha, which features six of the 12 characters and runs from 15-18 September. You can sign up for the test run via the game’s website.

For Honor: release date 

For Honor is due to be released on 14 February (Valentines day) for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. 

For Honor: No split screen mode

It looks like Ubisoft’s upcoming melee brawler, For Honor, will be released without a split-screen mode.

“The For Honor team made the difficult decision to cut split-screen co-op in order to deliver the best experience at launch,” Ubisoft told Eurogamer.

“It’s a feature that we liked and wished to deliver, but we found we can’t do it without impacting the quality of other elements that are more crucial to the For Honor experience. For Honor fans looking to play with friends will still have the option to play online co-op in the campaign and in all multiplayer modes.”

The decision follows a closed alpha test of the game, and comments from producer Stephane Cardin that his team would focus on refining the online co-op segment of For Honor.

When For Honor was first touted, creative director Jason VandenBerghe made much of the game’s inclusion of offline co-op, claiming that splitscreen was “absolutely a key feature”.

“You want sit on the couch and beat up your buddy, right?” he said at the time.

Head over to page 2 to read our hands-on impressions of For Honor from Gamescom 2016.

For Honor: Hands-on

I probably wouldn’t do well in battle. Medieval battle specifically, although I’m not sure I’d fare well during any period of prolonged fighting. I like to think I’d hack and slash with the practiced efficiency of, I don’t know, a really good knight. But I understand, deep down, that I’d be stabbed to bits as soon as I got off my horse. I probably wouldn’t even get a horse. They’d just give me a stick and let me prance around a bit before turning away, sighing despondently at the time machine I arrived in.

Thank you for reminding me of this, For Honor. I tried you at Gamescom 2016 and I didn’t do very well. I did, however, have fun. And that’s what really matters, right?

Right?

For Honor is a multiplayer game where you play one of three historical factions – Knights, Samurai and Vikings – and basically go at each other with swords and axes. Why? Something to do with a warlord called Apollyon, although there wasn’t much in the way of story during my brief time with the game at Gamescom 2016. Instead, my hands-on with For Honor saw me playing through a brief tutorial on the main mechanics, followed by a match against a group of other players.

Each of the main factions apparently have four factions to choose from in the final game, although in the build I tried this was limited to one for each group. Opting for the Samurai I went through a tutorial that delivered the basics of sword combat, at the core of which are the three stances you can put your character in, switched between by using a thumbstick when locked onto an enemy.

When facing down a foe you need to pay close attention to the direction of their stance – matching it to block an attack and moving to a different stance to attack. Keeping an eye on enemy movements to this degree automatically put me into Dark Souls mode, but I found that attempts to roll away from my adversary quickly resulted in me being mowed down. Instead of keeping the player constantly on the backfoot, the system seems skewed towards pushing forward in combat – breaking guards and undermining your opponents moves before they have a chance to string together an attack.

I managed to get a handle on this well enough in the tutorial, but everything went out of the proverbial window as soon as I was thrown into a match. Dominion in For Honor sees four players face another four players, fighting to take control of zones on the map. For starters, keeping attention locked on your attackers’ stance becomes a lot harder with dozens of (significantly weaker) AI soldiers mobbing around you, and I crucially found that my tactics had to change depending on which faction of fighter I was facing. Add a layer of team-based communication on top of all that and I mainly spend the first hour getting stabbed a lot, and apologising for getting stabbed a lot.

This isn’t a bad thing, however. I felt that I’d only scratched the surface of

For Honor’s combat system, which suggests there’s a rich networks of both small-game and big-game tactics waiting under the surface to poke and prod.

With a few more hours of play I’d probably pull together some semblance of competency, although having a sharp difficulty cliff to surpass inevitably stops it from being as instantly accessible as something like Blizzard’s Overwatch. That said, there’s definitely room for a challenging melee-based multiplayer game, and if you’re into perpetual, transcultural medieval killing, For Honor looks like a lot of fun.

The game is set to make its debut on 14 February (Valentine’s Day?) 2017, on PC, Xbox One and PS4. If you can’t wait until then, be sure to sign up to For Honors closed alpha, which kicks off on 15 September.