For Honor review – a bruising, bloody and focused fighting sim

Ubisoft's multiplayer-focused fighting game is a single-minded simulation of melee battle, with an emphasis on epic physical confrontations

There was an interview on Radio 4 with an ex-boxer recently, in which she spoke about the peculiar nature of the sport. One thing she said really stood out "Boxing teaches you to use violence as a resource." That phrase describes the experience of playing For Honor pretty well. This is a game about learning to use deadly force in order to navigate through a world where nothing else matters but conflict. For Honor has the purity, depth and bloody grace of a martial art.

The set-up is certainly as simple as a sport. The player selects from three warring factions - the knights, the samurai and the vikings, and then fights everyone else, either in the single-player mode or online. The former is effectively a training exercise, teaching you the basics of combat, as well as the special-move sets specific to all of the available classes of warrior, unlockable during play. There is a kind of story, about factions battling to control land and food, but really, you're just stomping through a series of beautifully realised historical environments bludgeoning people, while looking for collectibles (this is a Ubisoft game after all). It's basic stuff, but it does feature a range of breathtaking set-piece encounters from castle sieges to village raids, all drawn in gritty, pulverising detail.