Written by: Mark

 

 

 

It’s hard to believe that Koei’s Dynasty Warriors franchise is now 12 years old and there is no doubting it’s popularity with almost ten million units sold since it’s conception in 1997. Admittedly it has always been far more popular in the Far East thanks to it’s feudal samurai characters and Japanese history.

 

In a bold move the developers have recently taken the series in a different direction with the 'Dynasty Warriors: Gundam' series based on the Japanese anime also entitled Gundam. For those whom are unfamiliar with these cartoons they started way back in 1979 as a TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam which soon gained such popularity that the name became a franchise and branched out into movies, novels, toys and video games.

 

Taking this into account surely the Gundam name would perfectly translate into a highly playable and enjoyable next gen video game…or would it?

 

 

As stated earlier in the review the game is set either with the player flying through space or battling on the ground on a variety of different planets. The main objective appears to be as simple as utilising the in game maps to gain control of a variety of different zones in each level and this is done either by destroying the huge amount of enemies, boss characters or by saving fellow heroes.

 

 

The most impressive thing with any Dynasty Warriors game is the staggering amount of enemies which are on screen at any one time and I am not joking when I say that there can be literally hundreds to battle during each mission. Gundam 2 is no different and ensures that the game will require full concentration of the player in fact such was the amount of enemy characters that by the end of mission one I had achieved well over five hundred kills which is certainly impressive. It is worth saying however that whilst there are a staggering amount of enemy characters they are almost all identical with pretty poor artificial intelligence which does take away a massive amount of enjoyment from the game.

 

Sadly that is about as impressive as it gets really as the action is way too repetitive with almost constant bashing of the x button needed to progress. Admittedly the characters do have additional weapons but it is safe to say that these are not essential and seem to be included just to give the game that slight amount of variety.

 

Throughout the game characters can be levelled up the more you use each one and whilst this does not give you any further special abilities it does make the missions easier and the boss characters much simpler to defeat which is very welcome and does take away a little of the tediousness from the gameplay experience.

 

 

A further criticism is that at times the game does suffer from the occasional graphical glitch and instances of slowdown which really should not be happening on a next gen console. Perhaps in future releases the developers should concentrate on eliminating this and perhaps the way to go about this would be to take away some of the massive amount of enemies on screen at any particular time. I feel that by doing this it would not take away too much from the gameplay and give the game a more polished feel.