Gah! Not another Dynasty Warriors!?

Oct 1, 2007

Seriously, what is going on? These new screens illustrate gaming disappearing up its own hat, as the Dynasty Warriorsmachine creaks back into action, blinkered by fan demand and all but unchanged by the relentless march of technology and invention and innovation. Fresh, it aint.

Don't get us wrong, we were once big fans. Dynasty Warriors 2 kept us warm on cold winter nights, hammering our way through hundreds upon thousands of hapless Chinese soldiers until the body count hurt our heads to contemplate. Genocide? All in a day's entertainment.

But come on, Koei. Forget the '6' - just keep calling these inevitable sequels simply 'Dynasty Warriors' and be done with it, as they're never more than prettier reruns of the same formula. In fact, we could review this next-gen instalment right now. And we will. 7/10. Must try harder.

We might just be being grumpy about the whole thing. It'swouldn't be the first time.After all, if you've hit upon a working formula then why not stick with it, just sprucing up the visuals and ramming in more foes to smash up? You could do that. But it would be intensely lazy and without a shred of ambition.

Where are the destructible, jam-packed and heavily detailed environments? The revolutionary combat controls? The crevasse-deep animation routines or devilishly clever AI? We'll bet our granny's teeth that there's fogging in DW6, too - it's just part of the package, as relentlessly regular as the series itself.

Dynasty Warriors 6 is out early next year, and it will probably - nay, definitely - shift more money in its first week than we'll ever earn in a lifetime. Especially in Japan, where it's effectively a religion, like Pokemon or StarCraft. Meanwhile, we'll be gently weeping into a bath in a world-weary attempt to drown ourselves, and so escape the cycle of endlessly bland sequels. Actually, no we won't. We'll probably just be playing PES...