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Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper review
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The most amazing thing about Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper is that there were three titles before this on other platforms (this is a first time outing on the PC) and no one tried to stop them. According to the company press release, this version represents the very pinnacle of the series’ development, offering a “striking visual experience”, “intense tactical action”, an “advanced melee fighting system”, and “a weapon experience system adds RPG elements to the action-packed gameplay”.
Nope.
Not here it doesn’t.
Striking!
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The game is set, for those who care (play the game and you quickly won’t) in a mythical China where various warring factions have brought an end to… oh, I dunno, something nice. Peace, probably. Maybe someone died. The problem is that the story is so badly presented, through obscure, dull, ugly intro movies and obscure, dull text that you quickly just skip past them just to get to the action. Speaking of which…
“Intense tactical action”? Hmmmm… That must have something to do with the ninja elephants, of which you will hear more later. “Advanced melee fighting system”? Well, the game does want to make you think it’s Tekken or at least Dead or Alive, only it isn’t. The “weapon experience system” adds absolutely nothing - certainly not any kind of RPG element as you have no choice of where points go - and seems to have little to no effect on the main game.
Super Warriors
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Actually, barely controlled is a good way of summing up the combat in the game. Thanks to one of the worst cameras I’ve ever encountered in a game, you frequently lose track of targets even when there’s just the two of you. In bigger battles where dozens of identical, ink-stamp goodies and baddies are hacking away at each other (or just standing around, which happens a lot), you can end up utterly lost. Unless you’re playing one of the really big characters, you’ll find you can’t see yourself, let alone the boss character whose pounding you into the ground. Randomly button bashing doesn’t help, nor do the clear-everyone-from-around-you attacks, as everyone just rushes in again.
Jumbo Ninja
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The ninja elephants are another example. So long as you can see elephants you can hear them coming, though there’s no gradient to the sound to give you a hint on where they are. If they get behind you, they cloak themselves in ninja magic™ and sneak up on you. You will then be blasted into the air and, if you are very unlucky, swept along in front of the beast being constantly crushed until you somehow fall the right way or die. If you’re very lucky, you’ll be bundled into a corner and trampled to death in an inescapable trap that even your Musou attack can’t get you out of. Very frustrating.
Paint Drying
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There is the option for a second player to join in the fun but, unless you want a mate to get the same repetitive strain injuries as yourself, you might want to give it a miss. There are a bunch of play options, both in single and multi-player, but it all comes down to the same thing. Walk, hack, walk (for miles sometimes, as there’s never a horse to be found when you need one), hack, walk, hack, hack, hack, win/lose, do it again. There are 40 characters hidden in the game, but you’re just not going to care.
| Rating | |
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Graphics: Dull, uninspiring, foggy. |
4 |
Durability: There’s a certain guilty pleasure to be had in playing through one ‘clan’ story, but you won’t do much more. |
5 | |||
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Sound: Terrible rawk music and dull, uninspiring effects and voices. |
4 |
Gameplay: Easy to pick up, easier to put down. The game is best played with a joypad, but that doesn’t save it. |
4 | |||
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| References to other articles | |
Dynasty Warriors 5 Xtreme Legends screensNew screens anticipating this week's release for the new version.
Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper screensSome new screenshots to go with yesterday's announcement...
Dynasty Warriors head to PCThe popular franchise is heading to PC for the very first team.
| Related downloads | |
Btw, since you probably haven't even taken the time to look further than the basic controls (though the controls overall stay basic): there is a way to recover from enemy hits that send you flying. like the ninja elephants. Atleast, in the console versions there was (L1).
As to the ninja elephants, well I tried everything. There is an 'escape move' but the instructions say that it only works sometimes, and I can absolutely vouch for that. The trouble is, no computer character in the game on any setting reacts 'properly' to the surroundings. At one point, I lost all my back-up of other allies as they were all trying to attack a group of enemies who had somehow ended up inside the graphics of a castle. With the elephants, they just walk blindly into scenery for x-amount of time, bilndly being bumped and dragged along the contours of the scenery (and looking very silly). When they hit a corner they stick, just walking blindly nowhere. If you get stuck in front of them, their programmed command is to keep walking to charge you. Quickly, you get trapped in the corner too, unable to do anything.
There were so many basic graphics and AI errors that the game felt years old. To be honest, it felt like a lousy, rushed out, lazy conversion. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that a lot of the problems I found don't exist in the console versions. There has to be something to the whole Dynasty Warriors thing to have attracted so many fans and so many sequels, but whatever it is needs to be defined and put into the next PC conversion, otherwise it's going to get the same kind of review.
Happy gaming, hezz, and thanks for the comments!
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