Dynasty Warriors 5

Koei's latest hacks onto consoles....

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As usual the enemies, bar the officers, are pretty inanimate choosing instead to hang around in clumps and do extremely little but wait for you to slaughter them. Of course, when you least want them to - that is; while you're fighting a tough officer -they seem to turn up in droves and start getting in your way and occasionally taking a cautious jab at you, but a few cursory swipes in their direction usually puts an end to that.

Although it's almost entirely a "more of the same" game, Dynasty Warriors 5 has several notable improvements over the original. First and foremost you get to pick and choose from a range of unique bodyguards, rather than from a few units of identical clones. Instead of clustering around you like a pack of slightly retarded but hungry dogs the lone bodyguards are now noticeably more alert and effective in combat making them more than just a human wall to soak up attacks from soldiers. It seems the bodyguards have been chosen in an effort to help bring some of the multiplayer co-operative fun to single player, making players feel as though they're playing with something intelligent rather than trailing some sword-wielding A.I. baggage. If you're hot on mosou-driven mayhem you will be happy to know that you can trigger a special move from both your character and your bodyguard simultaneously if you are both fully charged and close together- suffice to say this will finish off any group of enemies in a pinch.

Secondly, If you're up for a night in with the lads then the mini-games in Dynasty Warriors will unleash plenty of possibilities for competition - you can race to kill a number of enemies in the fastest time, get the most kills in a certain time and much more. Ultimately the best way to play DW is co-operatively, however, you can race to get the most kills if you fancy, or hunt down officers in an effort to level your characters to an ungodly level of fighting skill, either way the extra player always makes it more fun provided they don't steal all the officer kills and completely ignore the main objectives.

The A.I. Bodyguard will, unfortunately (or fortunately, if your glass is half full) not compete with you for kills or drops but you can perform joint special moves with them, just like in multiplayer, and they'll help you out in a sticky situation. With the co-operative play in DW5 so much fun it's a huge surprise to discover that it only extends to two-player even though the Xbox supports 4 controllers. I'll admit that 4 way split screen of a typical Dynasty Warriors battle field may be asking a bit much from the system (and my television), but it would be fun none the less.

What I'm getting at here is that DW5 is "more of the same, with minor improvements", but we all expected that and would have been shocked to find it morphed into an RTS or a racing title. Any hardcore DW fan will be ecstatic to find another billion hours of gameplay to wade through, and any newcomers may be best picking up the series at this point and playing on the Xbox - although I'd recommend you give Dynasty Warriors 4, Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends and Dynasty Warriors 4 Empires a look for the many, many features that seem not to have made it into the fifth incarnation of the series. Okay, so that's three games but you should be able to pick them up cheaply from the second hand baskets and you will be set for hours of fun.

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By Philip Howard