Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 review (PlayStation 2)

As if to offer a counterpoint to this stupefying rhythm, battlefield victory conditions adjust during the match while AI-controlled commanders, both friend and foe, join the fray. This doesn't make the action any less lifeless, but it does lead to occasional mission losses that feel too much out of your own control. A friendly unit may join your attack on one of Gundam 2's large, predictable bosses, only to fall in battle and end the mission, no matter how much you try to distract your towering adversary. If you look for respite from this monotonous routine, you might get a few moments of enjoyment out of War Mode, in which you and a local buddy compete to fulfill various mission requirements. The other two multiplayer modes are useless deathmatch variants that feature no AI-controlled hordes, and are therefore even less amusing than the Mission and Official modes (which can be "enjoyed" in split-screen co-op with a friend, assuming that the mission supports it). Who would have thought that there was a way of making the Dynasty Warriors formula even more boring?

At the very least, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 offers a chilling vision of the future--a future in which robots will walk on an invisible surface in the middle of space and attack each other with flaming scorpion tails. Unfortunately, the PlayStation 2 version's limited draw distance makes space feel even emptier than it is on other platforms, and the land-based locales look hideous. They lack detail and personality, and feature a skewed sense of proportion. Gundams are enormous mobile suits multiple stories tall, yet they feel like small toy robots duking it out within forests of microscopic trees. Some of the attacks look colorful and produce a nice smattering of special effects, but they are small flashes in an otherwise homely game.

Nevertheless, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 is not an aggressively awful game; it's just aggressively boring. Yet Koei keeps churning these games out (and selling them) at an alarming rate, so it's unlikely that we'll see a shift to a more exciting approach in the near future. Rather than spending time slogging through such triteness, imagine the different ways that you could make a game featuring giant robots even less exciting. Sadly, you probably can't.