If you haven’t heard recently, there is a small-but-mentally-ill gaming following with a voracious appetite for slaughtering an army of enemies even dumber than themselves. The video game industry caught an abstract version of this ugliness in the early 1980’s, as third-party game makers flooded systems with classics like Purina Dog Chow’s Chase the Chuck Wagon and that game where you score points by raping a Native American woman. The end-result was the obliteration of the American console market. If it wasn’t for a company that was ruthless to third-party game designers (not to mention a crazy Italian that could shoot fire out of his fists), Americans would probably be reading books today, and actually have the intelligence to urinate in the toilet.
The first game to purposely embrace this concept was Doom. Each of the fifty on-screen monsters posed a threat to the player and created tension and created a mood in games that had never been witnessed before. And when the game’s quantity of assailiants didn’t create the mood, an iconic roster of demons kept the excitement going. Remember how well that worked? Remember how much Doom 3 sucked? Remember why? Maybe it was that part where your computer started shitting bricks trying to render more than one soda can at any time. I don’t think marketing a slow, plodding game to an audience who grew up on twitch gameplay was a good idea.
This concept of “One Versus Everyone” has always hit a snag whenever enemy diversity becomes a programming afterthought. If you’re wondering what games I’m railing against, write a strategy guide for your favorite beat ‘em up or action game and see if you include an “enemies” section. Heavenly Sword was touted as a holdover for God of War 3 and became one of the most disappointing games of 2007. The game’s automated blocking system didn’t do it any favors, nor did its game time slightly longer than reading this blog entry, but Nariko’s penchant for mowing down non-descript forces possesses limited fapping value. Memorable gameplay has to slide itself somewhere into the good ones, and aiming arrows with a half-assed Wii-Mote didn’t cut it.
But no series past-or-present has learned how to fuck-up the “one versus everyone” concept quite like the Dynasty Warriors franchise, which recreates ancient Chinese warfare with impeccable accuracy. The series carries on the legacy of old-school track and field games, testing the player to see how many times they can hit the same button every second. Dynasty Warriors rewards the destruction of your thumbs by splashing both pretty colors over your television and a kill count that will rise so fast you’d think you were pumping gas into your car.
What kills me about this is the way Koei passes up re-inventing this series into a spectacular action-strategy hybrid in the vein of Overlord, blending the beat ‘em up and strategy genres into something the gaming world has yet to witness. It’s not surprising that as long as the series proves profitable, you won’t be seeing any of this. You will witness Koei’s commendable reconstruction of early Chinese warfare, a time period dominated by disorganized swaths of samurai warriors. As all historians know, this method of warfare lasted well into the twentieth century, and was slated as the Chinese counter-tactic in the face of a Soviet invasion. Especially the part where Mao destroys the battlefield with his eye beams.
This gameplay has earned enough popularity to create its own imitators. The Oneechanbara franchise is one notable example that put Japanese company D3 and their budget-priced games on the map, which pits your scantily-clad bikini lady/jack-off material is the world’s last hope in repelling a zombie invasion. (Note: If I ever write an article detailing the stupidest plot lines, this game will be in it.) As one of history’s great game designers, I can tell you that the “fighting a giant horde of zombies that gets bigger by the minute and closer by the second” concept is nearly impossible to fuck up. Oneechanbara manages to do it. This stable of flesh-eaters doesn’t swarm like those in Dead Rising, nor do they scare the hell out of you like Half-Life 2’s headcrab zombies. They exist merely to die. I doubt the Nazis were having any fun when the march to Moscow was stymied by twenty million Russian casualties, most of these soldiers unarmed and assigned to start firing his buddy’s rifle when he went down. I doubt Wilt Chamberlain was having fun when he scored 100 points against a Knicks team that wouldn’t be favorites in the Maryland high school playoffs. And guess what? It’s not fun to fight outmatched competition in video games, either.
These franchises continue to trudge on, living off their dumber-than-dirt fan base. The Dynasty Warriors franchise has given its fans twenty games in eight years, including a Gundam spin-off that should be a true indication of their audience. If there was ever proof that making the most money doesn’t mean putting out the best product, this would be the item I would use to do it. So, my question for anyone who plays the Dynasty Warriors series: why should I play this game over this game? Take your time on this one. If you’re willing to constantly throw money at the Dynasty Warriors franchise to see how many monsters a programmer could copy-paste in a generic battlefield, I can name you a couple household cleaners that go great with Pepsi.
