Coda

Introduction

Coda started out life as a mod for Unreal Tournament 3, similar to many other UDK games. When the UDK was released, the development team began porting over the mod to the UDK, making it a standalone title. This gave the development team the freedom to add much more to the game, and release it to a wider audience. Since the release of the UDK version, they have enhanced the hit detection and the graphics. The UDK version is only available for PC, but the mod version is still avaiable for PC (Though the UDK version is reccomended) and PS3.  A download for the full UDK version can be found here.
 

Character Creation

Coda features a simple character creation system that allows you to choose one of three characters, and then modify the colours of their hair, eyes, clothing and weapon. On top of editing your character, you can also choose the weapon that you want your character to use, though it can be changed in game. There are over 10 different types of axes and swords in the game, all of them varying in range and speed. Generally speaking, the longer the range the slower the weapon. All of the weapons can kill an enemy in one direct hit making the combat of Coda extremely fast paced.

Combat

Coda features a complex melee combat system, that requires the player to move their mouse in the direction that they want to slash, clicking briefly to indicate that they want to slash. There are five different types of attack, side-slash, upwards slash, downwards slash, forward stab and diagonal slash. All of these different attacks react differently to each other, either stunning the enemy, giving your self a hyper, or just deflecting each other. Hypers are when one player uses the right attack compared to the opponents, such as the opponent using a side slash and you using a downward slash. A hyper will not do any damage, but will allow you to attack again instantly which can kill your enemy.  
  
In order to prevent people just spamming attacks to defend and hopefully get lucky, the developers included something called Whiffing. If a player spams too many attacks too quickly, they will begin to be surrounded by white particles which means they are "whiffing." If this happens, they are defenceless and they can no longer counter enemy attacks. 
   
Players can also charge their weapon up with some kind of elemental magic, either Earth, Fire, Sky, and Water. Each one of these elements gives your weapon a special ability. Fire allows you to launch a large fireball towards your enemy, Sky allows you to glide in the air, covering longer distances and setting your self up for a powerful downward slash. Earth puts more force behind your hits, sometimes launching them over 40 meters and knocking them down, but doesn't kill the enemy every time and Water allows you to deflect magic and send it flying back at the enemy.