Melee combat in gaming sucks. Heaving mounds of suckage, wall to wall and as far as the first-person perspective can see. That’s changing. Using modern technology, games are starting to appear that take melee combat seriously. One of those is Chivalry. The goal of Chivalry is to take realistic medieval combat, make it cinematic enough to be a good time, and then put you in the middle of the action. Take a look at this dev blog video for the details. Interesting!
One of the reasons why melee combat sucks in games is the NPCs don’t respect your pointy bits. They’ll gleefully throw themselves into your sword without regard. Hard to defend yourself against suicide charges, ya know? If Chivalry can give its characters even a vague sense of self-preservation, it’ll go a long way.