	Samurai Warriors
	Developer: Omega Force Publisher: Koei Release Date: Out Now Players: 1 - 2	Words By:
Samurai Warriors comes out of Japan from the makers of the popular Dynasty Warriors series, so what does SW add to the mix? Let’s see… When you fire up the game you’ll have Story Mode, Free Mode, New Officer Mode, Survival Mode, VS Mode and Challenge Mode to choose from. In Story Mode you can choose any unlocked character and battle through 5 missions. With each character you’ll have differing objectives in the same battles. Free Mode just lets you play any battle that you’ve already completed with any character. New Officer Mode lets you create a new hero from a pre-selected skin; you then train him up in your style of play. You also get to choose which clan you want to join if you can pass their trials. If you pass the trials you’ll then be able to take your new hero into the Story Mode. Survival Mode is pretty much like a survival mode on any other game; you just see how long you can survive for going from floor to floor in a castle. VS Mode sets you and your army against a friend and his army in split screen - pretty cool huh? And finally Challenge Mode consists of doing different challenges to see if you can get to the top of the scoreboard. The story mode is the main meat of the game; instead of being Chinese history as in Dynasty Warriors SW concentrates on Japanese history. Each hero in the game belongs to one of the three clans, so if you play through multiple times you can see the game from different points of view and make the bad guys win etc. An excellent feature that’s in the game is a co-op mode. Just get a second player to press start at the character select screen and you can play through the story mode with a friend. Unsurprisingly, Samurai Warriors plays exactly the same as the DW series, fighting through hordes of enemy soldiers that are little more than fodder for you, and officers who are a bit tougher. You really feel like a hero in battle, and as you’re slashing away you’ll be sending enemy soldiers flying through the air. On some levels you’ll easily reach 500+ slain enemies. During missions your allied & enemy officers talk to you, letting you know when they’ve entered a battle, and your leading officer gives you orders. If you kill an enemy officer they’ll drop items and weapons that you can equip before you enter each battle. As well as battlefields there are also missions in trap-filled castles. Using the 2 attack buttons you can do a lot of combos, which can be ‘bought’ at the end of levels using skill points. Also your character levels-up RG-style gaining attack and defensive power amongst other things. SW has a few annoying things to hamper the enjoyment, such as when you defeat an enemy hero you get a stupid cut scene of them walking away every bloomin’ time. As with every ‘Warriors’ game since the first one, you also get hindered by an occasionally erratic camera that won’t do what you want it to. Graphically, whilst not as good as we know the Xbox can do, SW still looks good with a high level of detail on the hundreds of troops on screen, and it retains a constant solid frame rate too. Draw distance has been improved from previous games, but the trade off with the large number of troops on screen is that there’s still a lot of fog about. The animation is good all round, moves look fluid and facial animation is nice. The sound is pretty much average with it mostly consisting of sword slashes and clashes. The voice acting is better than usual coming out of Japan with voices that usually fit the face… apart from one guy who sounds like a woman. Overall Samurai Warriors is a fun action slash-’em-up with lots and lots of stuff to do. If you’re a fan of Dynasty Warriors, despite the obvious similarities you’ve got no excuse not to get this highly enjoyable addition to the series.

Best Bits
- You’re a hero!
- Hundreds of enemies.
- Locked high frame rate.

Worst Bits
- Why can’t I control the camera?
- Repetitive for some.
- Some cut scenes are a pain.


by: SteMacD