Mount & Blade, my game of the year!

For the last couple of days i have been completely hooked to Mount & Blade.
I did start playing a bit of The Chronicles of Spellborn, but Mount & Blade quickly took my attention away and is right now all i play.

Admitted the title doesn't sound great, the graphics and character models look like 10 years ago but the gameplay is awesome.
Some of the "big" game makers should really take a look at this game.

This game is kind of a mix with RPG, action and strategy, but the thing they did very well was the horse/mounted combat, this is just awesome to play and it feels close to perfect (admitted it might not work perfect in an PvP environment but it works for PvE).
And then to think this game is (from what i have read) mostly made by a husband and wife team!!

This is definatly one of the most fun games i have played this year and really makes me wonder why the "big" gamemakers can't come up with great stuff like that.
For me a game usually stands or falls with the graphics/character models unless the gameplay makes up for all and with Mount & Blade it definatly does, looking at the hours i clocked so far on playing this game (68 hours and counting) it's my number one game for this year, even beating Fallout 3 for me.



So if you haven't, definatly check out this game, there's a full functioning demo out there that let's you play the (full) game up to level 7 without restrictions.
I have to admit when i first read about this game and saw the screenshots i was not really interrested but after seeing IGN give the game an 8 in a review i decided to check it out and am i glad i did :)

So looking at the amount of hours i played this game and the fun i am having i would probably say this is my game of the year!

Hmm, wonder what this game would be like with an engine like unreal or Gamebryo and a few tweaks here and there.....