Tournament of Legends Impressions

High Voltage Software has earned itself a bit of a reputation for developing distinctly noncasual titles for a console that has been made famous by that sort of game. Last year, the developer teamed up with Sega to release a sci-fi first-person shooter called The Conduit, and now it's at work on a mythology-focused fighting game called Tournament of Legends. Earlier today, we paid a visit to the High Voltage booth at GDC 2010 to see what this game is all about.

Tournament of Legends is described by High Voltage as an "arena combat game." Imagine a 3D fighting game, and replace the fireball special attacks and flaming dragon kicks with gladiator weapons, and then throw in a few minotaurs for good measure, and that's more or less how Tournament of Legends looks. The game is played with a Wii remote and nunchuk, with the remote controlling the weapon in your right hand and the nunchuk controlling the weapon or shield in your left hand. The basic gameplay looks like an uncomplicated collection of motion gestures and occasional button taps to guard or throw projectile weapons.

Weapons can be enchanted with unique abilities, so you've got a pretty good bit of control over your character's special attacks. These enchantments, like a "vampire" skill that sucks the health from your opponent and gives it to you, can be earned from felling rival characters in the story mode. Each time you defeat an opponent, you'll pick up his enchantment and his weapon. So if you're playing as the smooth-talking swordsman Marcus and you've just defeated the brutish minotaur Bravehoof, you'll be able to use the latter's ridiculously huge hammer with the former.

Other characters in the game include a bronze automaton named Volcanus, an attractive valkyrie called Kara, and a stone golem whose name we didn't catch, so we'll just assume it was "Big Stoney." Each of the levels you play through has a special guardian that's unique to that environment. Can you guess who lords over the Lair of the Kraken level? That's right: Get too close to the boundaries of this fighting arena and those giant tentacles may reach up and turn you into lunch.

Tournament of Legends is currently scheduled for release sometime in or around June. Expect to see a review hit right around then.