Dynasty Warriors 3

Now a year later comes Dynasty Warriors 3. Or maybe that should be Dynasty Warriors 2.5. Dynasty Warriors 3 isn't so much a new game as it is the old game with a bunch of new features. Your objective is still to slice and dice all of your enemies on the opposite end of the battle lines. But there are some new features. Probably the biggest of these new features is the two player split screen mode. No longer will you have to be a one-man army as you take the evil hordes. Now you can be a two-man army. I like those odds.

There's lot of other new little things besides the two-player mode. There are all sorts of little graphical tweaks that make the environments bigger and brighter. There's a host of new characters that anybody without a scoreboard won't be able to keep track of. And these new characters have whole new sets of Musou special moves. Which is Japanese for "I kick your ass with a lightning bolt!" Not really, I don't know what it means, but these special moves do look very impressive. All lightning flashing, fireball exploding, samurai goodness. Dynasty Warriors 3 also gives you a new combo system to make your ass kicking more effective and cool looking. In addition to new special attacks, there are more weapons in Dynasty Warriors 3 for your hack and slash pleasure. If you kill a General and he's carrying a big, cool weapon, then it's yours. Nice huh? You can also gather new items from fallen adversaries. Items that increase speed, or power, and small upgrades like a change of your costume.

And elephants. Did I mention the elephants? You get to ride a war elephant (although how is a war elephant different from a regular elephant?) into battle and use him to squash the competition. It's like a bad Arnold one liner. Elephants never forget, baby!

Dynasty Warriors 3 has a few other gameplay modes besides the standard hack and slash main game and the two-player edition. There is also the Endurance mode and a Time Attack mode. Endurance mode has you going mano a gango against six hundred angry Japanese. That's what you get for hiding the porno cartoons from those crazy Japanese. They're just out for blood now. Totally on a tangent here, but I don't care what kind of higher form of entertainment anime is considered in Japan, it's still two cartoon characters going at it. And that's just wrong. Time Attack mode is just how it sounds. You are given six minutes to single handedly bring down several squads of soldiers armed only with a sword and your mad skillz yo. Let's see Bruce Willis die-hard his way out of that one.