Xbox World 360 #78 (June - yes really) - Scores

Hero of Canton wrote:

Jaxley wrote:A June issue now does seem very odd. Does it say when the next one after that is out? I'm guessing it'll be a long while.

I imagine the next one will be 'summer 2009' and the one after will be July, so it can catch up a bit.

Wouldn't that put them onto 14 issues a year then HoC? Thought mags only done 13 per year as standard...

Hero of Canton wrote:
Some people really don't get the DW series at all. There's a mentality among a large circle of critics that it's just a repetitive button-masher and presumably whoever reviewed this one just saw it as more of the same.

What else is it then? Maybe this game is different but the ones I've played on the current gen consoles (and other similar games that may as well be called Dynasty Warriors) are all bloody awful. Even when playing with a friend it's no fun - just us running around to hold points and killing identical enemies over and over and over and over again. Couple this with a laughable draw distance, laughable pop-in, laughable visuals, laughable animation and a laughable story, and you've got a series that really needs to be taken out back and put out of its misery.

I guess I'll just never 'get' how this series is still around.

Andrew Mills wrote:

Hero of Canton wrote:

Jaxley wrote:A June issue now does seem very odd. Does it say when the next one after that is out? I'm guessing it'll be a long while.

I imagine the next one will be 'summer 2009' and the one after will be July, so it can catch up a bit.

Wouldn't that put them onto 14 issues a year then HoC? Thought mags only done 13 per year as standard...

No, it wouldn't, because there wouldn't be a Christmas issue. You've got 12 months and one extra.

What else is it then? Maybe this game is different but the ones I've played on the current gen consoles (and other similar games that may as well be called Dynasty Warriors) are all bloody awful. Even when playing with a friend it's no fun - just us running around to hold points and killing identical enemies over and over and over and over again. Couple this with a laughable draw distance, laughable pop-in, laughable visuals, laughable animation and a laughable story, and you've got a series that really needs to be taken out back and put out of its misery.

Well, for starters the story isn't laughable. The DW games are based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is a historical epic with a ridiculous number of characters. If you just blast through the levels without going into any of the side stories, reading the intros and the character bios, then you won't see just how much thought has been put into that aspect. It might look to some that you're just randomly running around killing everyone, but there's more to it than that. And the visuals aren't laughable considering how much is going on. Few games even attempt to recreate the chaos of large-scale battle the way the DW titles do.

From your description I'd be surprised if you've played any of the current gen DW games for more than an hour or so, and probably on one of the easier difficulties. Ramp up the difficulty and it's far more tactical - you have to pick your battles wisely, know when to retreat, choose which areas you need to capture first, which strongholds you can perhaps afford to lose if you're struggling...I'll concede that the games perhaps don't do a good enough job of making that obvious to most players, but they're written off far too easily.

DW: GUNDAM 2 for example doesn't really reveal many of its depths until you've been playing for around ten hours at least. There's an absolute fuckton of content there. And while some will see the gameplay as repetitive, the draw for a lot of players is the sheer empowerment - at upgrading your mech to ridiculously powerful levels, at beating the gooseberry fool out of hundreds of enemies at once, at taking out one of the giant versions in the shortest possible time...

It's definitely a niche title in the west, but that's because a lot of western gamers have a different mentality to eastern players, which is why it's so beloved in Japan. It's not just a case of 'those crazy Japs will buy any old shite' because the series is popular for a reason. It wouldn't have been going this long otherwise.

Picked this up today and in their 2 page article in their live section about the Resi 5 backlash over the score they gave it they have quotes from Hexx, Sarge and Chalkitdown