The Game:
Dynasty Warriors has always been a deceptively addicting game series. The ability to bowl over dozens or even hundreds of minions in one fell swoop is far more interesting than it has any right to be. Of course, that doesn't mean that every Dynasty Warriors titles is worth purchasing. Far from it. If you own Dynasty Warriors 3, chances are you're going to get roughly the same experience out of 4 and 5 and whatever number they're up to now. So what would it take to get a casual fan to plunk down his hard-earned $60 plus tax?

Giant robots. Everything is better with giant robots. Imagine how great Driving Miss Daisy would have been if Mecha Godzilla had made an appearance. That is why I was giddy with excitement when Dynasty Warriors Gundam was announced. The combination made perfect sense. I couldn't wait to jump into my Gundam of choice and start mowing through evil robots as I saved the universe from certain destruction.

Sadly, the thrill of the game wears off far too quickly. The problem originates with the decision to make the story a bizarre conglomeration of several different Gundam series, each with entirely unique and often contradictory storylines. This results in a plot that is at best incomprehensible, and at worst mind-shatteringly confusing. To make matters worse, since several of the characters come from different series, they often use the same Gundams, resulting in moments where the character you're fighting looks exactly like you do. It's frustrating, to say the least.

Of course, even the worst plots can be forgiven if the game in question provides some fantastic play mechanics, which Dynasty Warriors Gundam also fails to do. If you've been concerned about the lack of innovation in recent Dynasty Warriors games, than walk away now, because Gundam seems to have actually stripped the gameplay down to its core. You essentially only have to hit two buttons for 95% of the game. You can imagine how tiresome this gets. At least the Chinese fighters in Dynasty Warriors had different period weapons. Here you get guns that are almost entirely ineffectual. Unless they're used in conjunction with a special move, they almost never do any damage. And that's if they even hit their intended target.

A few gameplay concessions have been made to better integrate the two series together. For example, many of the Gundams have the power to fly for short periods of time. This doesn't really help in combat, but it is nice if you're low on health and need to get away from a horde of enemies bearing down you. But it's truly surprising just how little has been done to change the way the game plays from the existing entries in the series.

The further you progress into the game, the more opportunities you have to upgrade your armor, weapons, melee attacks, etc. However, you have to play through a hell of a lot to even start getting these bonuses, and most of them don't affect gameplay in the slightest. I wouldn't call it a broken system so much as an extremely lazy one.

In case you have a friend who also wants to get in on the malaise, there are versus and co-op multiplayer modes. Between the two, the versus mode is by far the more entertaining, but neither are as much fun as, say, sitting through a lecture on the cranial structure of a Moose or getting a frontal lobotomy. Basically, there's very little to recommend about Dynasty Warriors Gundam.

The Graphics:
I'll give them this: The developers did a good job of bringing the various Gundam characters and robots to life. When in motion, seeing a giant robot beating the bejeezus out of a hundred other similarly sized machines is pretty darn cool. So that's a +1 for character design and a +1 for combat effects. Now let's subtract about 100 for the level designs, which are stale and bland. A lot of it just looks like polygonal planes, with a few bizarre protrusions breaking out awkwardly. Every level is split into different zones, but without the map, there would be literally no way to tell the difference between them. Everything looks the same. It's pitiful. This also goes for the enemies, all of whom seem to be moving slate gray boxes with arms. Every so often, the storyline takes you into outer space, which is actually worse, because all "space" consists of is a starfield. That's it. You zoom back and forth in sheer nothingness, while in the background you see a few stars and space ships. How lazy could the developers be?

The Audio:
A common complaint I hear about games that originate in Japan is that the English localizations are poor. Often those complaints are spot-on, but even they can't convey the depth of the bad acting on display here. Of course, it doesn't help that the characters all have dialogue that must have been written by a brain-damaged three year old, but either way, it's painful to listen to. Luckily, there is a Japanese track, which by no means suddenly turns the game into a masterpiece, but it may at least stop you from grinding your teeth down to bloody stumps. The combat sounds also get extremely repetitive. Maybe this is because you seem to have a sum total of four attacks and only two of them actually work.

The Conclusion:
While the premise sounds cool, Dynasty Warriors Gundam is nothing but a cash-in on two lucrative enterprises. You can almost feel the contempt being hurled your way as you realized you just spent the better part of $100 buying a game that was probably put together in a day. Between the uninspired graphics, repetitive gameplay, and truly awful dialogue, you'll wish you had never laid eyes on Dynasty Warriors Gundam, even if you're a fan of either or both of the series from which it was derived. Skip It.