I am creating this thread on behalf of what I believe to be the most underplayed multiplayer game in existence. (IT'S FREE, TOO!)
Official Website (the forums are surprisingly active, though threads don't get created often)
Strategy Wiki
Video highlighting very proficient use of the melee system
Before I start, I want to say that I LOVE games that blur genres. I created Pokemon Draft with the intention of combining the draft gametype of Magic with Pokemon. Monday Night Combat, an upcoming shooter that I am also pumped for (thread here), combines a tower defense game, a third-person shooter, and the skill-upgrading and creeps of DotA (they'll be at E3!). I get super excited every time I see developers take genres and mash them all together to create an enjoyable experience.
That's why I like this game. Savage 2, in my opinion, is the ultimate genre-blurring video game.
Savage 2, developed by S2 Games (the same guys who did Heroes of Newerth, but this is a much better game), is a combined RTS/FPS/RPG/action game. (That's, count'em, FOUR genres.) The ultimate objective of each match is to destroy the enemy's base. The Humans must destroy the Beast Lair, and the Beasts must destroy the Human Stronghold.
The majority of players on the team are Action Players, who do the dirty work on the battlefield. They hack, slash, and shoot other players and enemy buildings to clear the battlefield and earn gold and experience to power themselves up. There are several classes of Action Players, ranging from the stealthy Marksman and the bloodthirsty Savage of the Humans to the sneaky Shapeshifter and the vicious Hunter of the Beasts. Savage 2 is a melee-based game: while ranged attacks are useful for weakening opponents before they close in on you or picking off weakened runners, melee attacks do much more damage.
Action Players are grouped into Squads, and each squad has an Officer. Squad members receive a large buff to their attack damage, health regeneration, stamina regeneration, and mana regeneration while they are in close proximity to their officers, so you should stick to your Officer unless you need to perform some stealthy task on the battlefield.
The other type of player is the Commander. At the start of the battle, teammates elect a Commander, who views the entire battle from a RTS-style camera view. The Commander is in charge of buffing teammates and debuffing enemies to make fights go more smoothly, building sub-bases, towers, and other buildings to establish map control, and being the general and caretaker of the team. (Personally, I think being an Action Player is more fun, though.)
The game is completely free. You have the option of paying $10 to gain access to replays, stats, and a few other trivial features, but the majority of the game is completely free. S2 has kinda put the game on the backburner with the advent of HoN, but they're planning to backport a lot of their server optimizations and community features from HoN into Savage 2 sometime soon.
I urge you guys to try this game out! It definitely needs more people on the servers. It's actually quite surprising that such a polished game has such a tight-packed community. More people need to know about this amazing multiplayer experience.