Quick Look: Dynasty Warriors 8

By this point in the series, I think you've murdered everyone in the world.

I haven't paid any attention to DW games in years but holy shit it still looks like an upressed PS2 game.

Got the 360 version since multiplats are usually good on that system.That was a mistake. Yeah, the slowdown is brutal at times. Tecmo has said they've demanded a patch so we'll see when that happens.

Game is great though, just the kind of mindless stuff I wanted.

In for Chinese Cowabunga.

This game looks like dog shit, and I am offended that they ask for $60 to play it.

JEFF, EDF is not a bad game you fuck!

Confirmed, it's the next Dynasty Warrior game.

Oh man that ending was totally worth it "I waited 92 years" "but I only played 2 levels!"

Is this a Wii or a DS port? This looks terrible.

Someone that likes trackmaina really does not have any room to be critical about other people's choice of games.

This looks indistinguishable from the previous Dynasty Warriors game... That will do, I suppose.

Japanese game checklist

- Shitty HUD design - check

- Annoying 80s guitar solo music - check

- Bland level design - check

- Shitty VO acting - check

- Arcade 80s sounding sound effects - check

- Desperately rehashing gameplay elements - check

- Anime looking characters - check

- Stupid Final Fantasy "limit break" powers - check

Finished watching...surprised it wasn't sunday morning by now. Only the power of J&V managed to carry me through this snorefest.

I'd rather play Dynasty Warriors than any given brown/gray military shooter that also only has two buttons (left trigger and right trigger).

Yeah, fuck opinions, right? Hope you were joking. Trackmania is great and this is terrible.

I totally see the appeal of mindless slashing through hundreds of dudes and leveling up characters. My problem with Dynasty Warrior lies with the shoddy presentation in pretty much every aspect.

I feel like these machines should be powerful enough to run the same-looking enemies on screen at more than 10 frames per second.

I can't believe how shitty this still looks since the beginning of this gen until the end. The best Musou game was the One Piece one.

What I feel this franchise really needs is just Koei saying fuck it, putting it on PC, and letting people go hog wild with mods. If they're not going to make this into the Asura's Wrath nonsense it should have been by now, then let the community do it.

As for Dynasty Warriors franchise, the issue that Jeff has is that in spite of the repetition, which is inherent to a lot of great games, there is no element that seems or is self-evidently compelling about it to warrant 8 games in the franchise. Logically there must be something there that people like but when asked Jeff finds little satisfying answers besides "uh, I like to cut a lot of dudes I guess?"

Of course we're not getting the full breadth of Japanese players' perspectives on this but I imagine it's not received that differently there than it is here. I don't have much knowledge of 8-4's prior discussions, have they ever talked about Dynasty Warriors in the last few years? As a group who seem to have done good work on cracking the nut on Monster Hunter, I would like to see them do the same with Dynasty Warriors.

That hoop blade girl is giving me a Threads of Fate flashback.

I've played and enjoyed some Dynasty Warriors titles in the past but man that slowdown looks pretty terrible.

Funny how "bored" they are with this when it is the best game of the recent quick looks they have shown. If I had to play this or trackmania I'm picking this all day.

Dynasty Warriors is just a zombie game without the zombies.

These games are supposed to be set in Ancient China, right? So, why is there rock music all over these games?

I never thought of comparing these games to EDF but I guess that's pretty accurate. I really enjoyed the EDF that came out not long after the 360, played that a lot.

Shit, just checked Steam and the sequel is really cheap there! Totally bought.

One line review: "Dynasty Warriors 8... Hmm... I see... Well that will do I suppose."

Dinosaurs > Man

DAT FPS

Apparently it's just the Xbox version of the game, it was originally made for the PS3 and ported to the Xbox by a 3rd party, shittily, hence the slowdown. The PS3 experiences zero slowdown. They are working on a Xbox patch as well.

What are you seeing?

I haven't played a "Warriors" game since Dynasty Warriors 3

Looks like I haven't missed much. I always hold out hope that one day they'll evolve these games in some more major ways, but I guess I'm just not who they're catering to.

Scrumpadoochous!

At one point I looked up and instead of "Bandit Lieutenant" over an enemy's head I read "Bad Lieutenant", and thought Harvey Keitel or Nicholas Cage might be in the game.

GOTY

this looks like the same game that came out near the launch of the ps2

This.

@mrjorowe: I was not trackmainia is awful and boring.

I saw Dynasty Windows 8...

I had way too much OS problem lately

This franchise has been funded solely by weeaboos since 1997.

I played this game on the ps2 over 10 years ago.

For all the things people can sort-of apologize for, in my mind, the fact that they can't be bothered to put ragdoll physics into a game completely predicated on the idea of slashing a dozen dudes at once and watching them fly through the air tells me how little they care about anything.

I think we get that you guys hate dynasty warriors already...

Some one please photoshop old Drew.

This game looks craaaaaaaazy boring, hot damn. Even the text box is unsure about it!

@oursin_360: They're getting close to maxing out the PS2 hardware

@illuminosopher said:

I look at the games and just think they still look like Japanese games did almost 10 years ago. All the fonts and menus still seem very early-PS2. Jeff is right to laugh, in that it's silly that enemies pop into existence right in front of you; would it kill the game to either have the dudes run in from around a corner, or at least pop into existence in whatever direction the camera is not pointed, so it's always off-screen? I know that's like the "tradition" of the series, but to any newcomer, it looks sloppy.

I really don't give a shit about Dynasty Warriors to want to defend it, but it's not surprising that it looks boring to watch when only one combo is used for most of the video.

I don't think that comparison works. Shmups are fast paced. Every small enemy, no matter how easily killed, is a threat that can actually kill you. And they come in in pretty patterns, die instantly, and are evenly distributed to create a consistent difficulty curve.

Dynasty warriors is filled with fodder enemies that literally stand around doing nothing. Its real enemies can eventually die to simple, repetitive combos. Its areas are bland and repetitive.

I get that the game can have more going on. You can increase the difficulty level. You can learn complex combos and see how high a number you can get. It's fun to cut through fodder for a bit. You can like whatever you want to like.

But the shmup comparison does not work for me. Like Jeff, I simply do not understand how this series not only still exists, but still sells for $60 rather than being a quirky downloadable title with DLC every 6 months of new, slightly different characters and stages.

These DW games would be more interesting, if the battles were challenging. Instead the enemies just stand around waiting to get killed. Maybe in future DW QL's they can start the game off at the highest difficulty. Because an hour of pointless hack-n-slash is boring. Most of the time, I wasn't even watching it.

Well, as always, Dynasty Warriors looks fucking dreadful.