Dynasty Warriors 7 (PS3, Xbox 360)
Warriors, come out and pla-ay!
by Every Reviewer Ever
Can you believe that Koei has cranked out yet another Warriors game? I mean, who keeps buying these things, am I right? Sure, I really enjoyed this series 10 years ago, but it's been garbage ever since. Unfortunately, Koei sent us a reviewable build of the game, so we're kinda obligated to review it. I'm the one who drew the short straw, so I guess I'm stuck. Wow, can you imagine how angry our readers would be if our next Madden review began with the reviewer spending the opening paragraph talking about how much he hates sports games? Let's face it, though, way more people care about Madden than the fifth Warriors game to come out this year, so none of my editors are going to question this intro. Before I dive into quoting a list of game features from the press release and saying how the gameplay hasn't changed, I feel a bit of cleverness coming on. Hmm...I already joked about being forced to write the review. Now I'll say something about how my coworkers walked by my cubicle and cracked jokes about me having to play this trash or how I tricked one of them into playing the multi-player mode with me for a few minutes--and now he hates me! Either one of those works.
Now for the basic description of the gameplay. Considering that I'll be complaining a lot about how everybody knows how this series' stale gameplay goes, I know this explanation isn't really necessary. Still, it helps pad the word count. This is the new Dynasty/Samurai/Orucho/Gundam/Fist of the North Star Warriors game, and guess what? It plays exactly like all the other games in the series. We're all incredibly familiar with it by now, and it's totally dull. You control one of dozens of characters that probably all play exactly the same (I only tried the one that's highlighted by default on the character select screen), and they all have crazy names that are hard to pronounce. Is that racist? Eh, maybe a little. Anyway, after you chose your character, you're dumped onto a battlefield filled with hundreds of brain dead enemy soldiers. All you need to do is tap the X or Square button over and over again until you win. There seemed to be a lot of areas on the map that I didn't have to go to, and little messages from other soldiers kept popping up asking me to do things, but I didn't really pay attention to them. Who knows/cares what that's for? I just kept tapping X. That's all you do in the game. Some people might find this to be "fun," but it's not. Did you see how I used quotes there? That means it's sarcasm!
Now let's look at the press release here. It says something about some new types of modes. To be honest, I only played the new mode for about a minute or two. It seemed like all you did was press X a lot, so it's probably the same as the old Story Mode. Heck, I only bothered playing through about half of the first mission in Story Mode anyway. Can you blame me, though? These games suck. Only a masochist would get "enjoyment" from them (haha--sarcasm!). Seriously, though, the five minutes I spent in Story Mode was more than enough to show me that this game plays EXACTLY like its predecessors. EXACTLY.
The press release also says something about a new weapon and combo system. I'm just gonna gloss over these since I really didn't play the game enough to comment on them. I mean, I was swinging a sword around like in every other game, so how different can the weapon system be? And combos? Did I mention that I pressed X a lot? Real "innovation" there, Koei. There were a bunch of menus and options and stuff before the battle, but I didn't really pay attention to those. I just skipped by that boring crap until I got to the slashy-slashy bits. I probably didn't miss anything, though. We all know how this series goes.
Here's a quick paragraph where I mention that the story is boring and confusing because I don't care about Chinese/Japanese/Orachi/Gundam/Fist of the North Star history. I'll also mention that the graphics are ugly. Since I don't want to be TOO negative, I'll throw the game a bone by saying that fans will enjoy unlocking all of the playable characters. Actually, I don't want to seem like I'm praising it too much. So, you'll enjoy unlocking all of the playable characters--IF you can stomach having to play the game long enough to do so. Heh. Good one.
OK, I've wasted enough of my time writing this review. How should I end this? I could do the pandering "fans won't care about my review and buy the game anyway, which is great if this is the sort of 'game' that you're into" conclusion. Or should I end on a snarky note? Like, say something about how if you "enjoy" this sort of thing, you're clearly a glutton for punishment. Then I could recommend a comically painful experience that would be preferable to playing this game. Yeah, I'll go with the second one: Even though this game is undeniably awful, I'm sure there are some of you out there who will still "like" playing it. If that's the case, might I recommend instead placing a rabid weasel down your pants. At least that wouldn't be as boring and repetitive as this game. Oh, and the weasel would also be on fire--that would be funny. Haha...gotta remember to mention that line on the podcast.
4/10
(NOTE TO EDITOR: I know we haven't gotten a build of the game in yet, but it would save me a lot of time if we could just publish this review on our 3DS site, too. Just change the title to Samurai Warriors: Chronicles and we're set. You might also want to get this review ready to run when the "Xtreme Legends" or "Empires" version of this game comes out.)
