Better Late Than Never Reviews: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 (PS3, 360) Review

As a fan of a handful of Gundam series, it is with disappointment that I present to you this Better Late Than Never review. It's for Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3, a game that visually looks striking-- at least the mobile suit part. Unfortunately, it takes more than beautiful cel-shaded mobile suit models to impress SuperPhillip Central. This review shows just that.

Gun...damn, is this game repetitive!

Last year I had the great experience of playing Hyrule Warriors, a Dynasty Warriors style game that featured The Legend of Zelda. Its gameplay and content were both quite excellent. Perhaps I should have lowered my expectations when entering another game with the Dynasty Warriors moniker, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3. Instead of a game that could easily be played for 50+ hours without complaints, I received a game that just would never end. I constantly wished for the massively boring and worthless story to be told to be over, thinking the game could go screw itself after fake ending after fake ending. Sadly, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 is a turkey of a Dynasty Warriors game.

The story of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 takes all of the familiar and even unfamiliar pilots and characters across numerous Gundam series and puts them into a parallel world. The goal is to find their way out of this world, forging new alliances and participating in battle after battle until the whole thing gets horribly repetitive and wears out its welcome. I couldn't tell you much else about the story other than I was more than glad to just mash the X button to fast forward through the insanely cheesy dialogue. That was only after subjecting myself to some of the most inane discussions I've had to witness in quite a while. I know this is anime and all, but seemingly every conversation led nowhere or was the same thing only with different characters.

"Oh! You're in this parallel world, too? How did you get here?"
"I don't know. I'm going to tell you the last thing I did before I was transported to this world, and it's going to be similar to the fifty-six other characters' tales. Now, let's have forty more lines of dialogue that is positively aimless in order to annoy Phil."

While the story and especially the dialogue are better left for a high school drama student's audition, the presentation of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 gets points for being visually interesting, if only for the stars of the game, the mobile suits.. The amazing cel-shaded look of mobile suits really is eye-catching and look brilliant. Sure, everything else isn't very compelling, especially texture-wise, but at least what you control and you destroy look great. The music borrows some themes verbatim from past Dynasty Warriors: Gundam games, but that music wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination to begin with. If it ain't broke, right?

The mobile suits are indeed the star of the visual show.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 is a cruel temptress. It promises a game packed with countless missions to complete, but they end up all being so similar to one another that one has to ask what the point is. Mission Mode from past Dynasty Warriors: Gundam games returns to the spotlight with this third installment. This time there are a smorgasbord of mission types to select from. History missions focus on reenactments of battles throughout an assortment of Gundam series like Mobile Suit Gundam, G Gundam, Gundam Wing, Turn A Gundam, among many others. In Collection missions, clearing these unlocks rare mobile suit designs to add to your arsenal. Memorial missions unlock after achieving certain in-game goals such as taking down 100 ace pilots, for instance.

It feels great to go in the middle of a huge group
of enemy mobile suits and take them all out.

There are also plenty of other types like the more difficult Challenge missions, Friendship missions, Relation, and Special missions to do. You might think that with all of these mission types that you'll have a lot of variety in the actual missions you battle in. You'd be thinking wrong, however.

Most battles in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 play out in a similar fashion. There are different areas of the map to capture for your side (e.g. repair hangars to replenish health of allies, mobile suit factory to replenish your forces' gauge, and catapults that can send you across the map in an instant), and the aim of a typical Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 mission is to get the enemy forces' gauge down to zero by capturing their controlled areas and defeating rival ace pilots. The former is performed by destroying enemy mobile suits within a given area; thus lowering the control gauge. When it hits zero, your side has taken over control of that area.

Don't mind me. I'm just upping my kill count.

When the enemy forces' gauge empties, the commander of the forces enters battle. Defeating him or her results in a victory. The same thing happens for your side's defeat as well. If your side's gauge hits zero and you or your commander are destroyed, it's game over.

It's only when you hit certain History missions that Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 offers any semblance of variety. Sometimes you'll be asked to take down 1,000 mobile suits. Others require the capturing of certain bases, while others are time limit oriented. These are so few and far between that you can't help but feel tedium rears its ugly head into the picture.

Additionally, the progression of missions is often too confusing or worse yet, totally obtuse. It's not a good sign when there's an interface that shows what missions are available to proceed in the game, and it isn't always the most up to date and helpful. Many times I'd be cycling through my assortment of Gundam and mobile suit pilots, hoping I'd pick the right one to advance the story.

When two ace pilots strike at the same time,
you get a scene and engagement such as this one.

The actual gameplay of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 is done well enough. Mobile suits control tightly, and each have a nice sense of, well... mobility, about them. You can use a suit's thrusters to speed along the battlefield, though it can run out if used too much, requiring a quick cool-down period. Essentially only two buttons are used for attacks, square and triangle, and these need to be alternated to perform the more visually interesting and powerful combos from each mobile suit. In addition to regular attacks, you can utilize a super-strong special attack or call in a partner for some temporary destruction by sacrificing some energy from your mobile suit's special gauge. Heaven help you if you end up in a battle in a close quarters situation, though. The camera is not well suited for these types of engagements.

The Unicorn Gundam is burning red!
Hey, that's Domon Kasshu's gimmick!

After each battle, your pilot earns experience and can level up to a maximum level of 50. Each level earned grants higher stats like melee strength, shot strength, and armor strength. You also get mobile suits based on ace pilots you defeated and what suit you were piloting in that mission. Each boast different stats, and if you find a suit you really like, you can upgrade its slots with higher stats benefits for a price (each suit has a different amount of slots, and doing harder difficulties can grant you suits with up to 10 slots). This makes it where you can pilot immensely powerful mobile suits that can take down ace pilots like they were butter. It's pretty satisfying like much of the gameplay in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3.

That's why it's just a shame that the mission structure is so obtuse and the missions themselves seldom change things up. It makes Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 such a chore to play in extended sessions or even after a set amount of hours of total play time. Yes, the gameplay is still the good old fashioned Dynasty Warriors that fans of the series can enjoy, but the lack of mission variety hurts the game tremendously. Mission abort!

[SPC Says: D]

SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs - Thankful for Even More VGMs Edition

Thanksgiving is this Thursday, so SuperPhillip Central is delivering a healthy plate full of VGM goodness. We start things off with some timely Killer Instinct: Season One music, and then we go a bit retro for three VGMs with music from Resident Evil, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Finally, we wrap this nutritious and delicious edition up with music from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. You can be sure there are no turkeys here!

Check out past VGM volumes with the VGM Database at this link! Now, onto the VGMs for this week!

v1011. Killer Instinct: Season One (XONE) - The Tiger Warrior (Jago Theme)

Let's get tribal to kick things off with this edition of SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs. It makes sense to start off with a track from Killer Instinct's reboot, as that game is two years old now! In fact, with the December update, a new UI and a shadow version of Jago, the subject of this VGM volume, will be released. What a perfect way to welcome both than with this VGM!

v1012. Resident Evil (PS1) - Ending Theme

Smile and say cheese! No, really. This ending theme for the survival horror classic that started it out is pure camp and cheese, much like the acting that the original Resident Evil was packed with. Like one of the YouTube comments says, it really does sound like something that would play at the freeze frame of a 80's movie.

v1013. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES) - Scene 2, Part 1

We're going even further back into the past with this NES classic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. Obviously, the subtitle tells us that this game is a port of the highly popular arcade game, but what it doesn't tell you is that the NES version housed a couple of extra stages not part of the original arcade game. The visuals and sound may be less impressive, but the extra levels more than made up for it.

v1014. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (SNES) - City

In the Beat-em-up special edition of SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs, we brought up the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers movie as one of the games. This time we look at the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers game that was more nonlinear in the fact that you got to choose which Power Ranger you wanted to play as, each with his or her own level to go through.

v1015. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GCN) - Against the Black Knight

We finish off this edition of SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs with one of the GameCube's more valuable releases cost-wise. It's Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, part of a series that is no stranger to SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs. The soundtrack uses synth symphonic sounds to deliver a tense and action-packed soundtrack, such as this theme that plays when going against Path of Radiance's main villain, the Black Knight.

Bad Levels in Gaming History - Volume Eight

Level design is something that has always fascinated me. Its importance in making a game fun to play cannot be spoken enough. In fact, level design can be the difference between a solid game and a poor one-- no matter how good your gameplay actually is. Of course, even some of the greatest games possess a level that make you think the intern got to design it on the main designers' days off. That is what this series of articles focuses on-- those poor levels in games that are either poorly designed, just plain boring, tedious, annoying, frustrating, hard for the wrong reasons, or a combination of several of those ideas. Once you have looked at the examples provided, feel free to chime in with your own picks for bad gaming levels.

For a look at past installments of Bad Levels in Gaming History, look no further than these links:

Volume One

Volume Two

Volume Three

Volume Four

Volume Five

Volume Six

Volume Seven

The Library - Halo: Combat Evolved (XBX, 360)

Whether you're playing the original Halo: Combat Evolved on the O.G. Xbox, or playing the remake in the Halo Anniversary Edition for the Xbox 360, one level that stands out as a slog no matter which version of the game you play is the Library level.

You get an NPC, 343 Guilty Spark, as your guide, and your job is to walk the master of unlocking (move over, Jill Valentine) to various locked doors that need opening by said guide. When you aren't dealing with the ever-annoying Flood enemies as you progress through the level, you're trying to survive in various firefights against Flood of various shapes and sizes (and weapons in the case of the rocket-toting variety).

All of it is an immensely slow and admittedly boring going of it through a level full of Halo's most annoying enemies. It's not well designed, it's certainly not fun, and it wasn't really made better with Halo Anniversary Edition.

Grannies World Tour, 8-Bit Edition - Rayman Legends (Multi)

Rayman Legends' predecessor, Rayman Origins, gave players who strove for 100% completion a wonderful final level to play. It was a hard-as-nails, but fair platforming challenge known as the Land of the Livid Dead, unlocking once all ten skeleton teeth were collected from treasure chase levels.

It seemed that Rayman Legends had a lot to live up to in giving the player a great reward for making it to the end of the game, a true platforming challenge. Instead, Rayman Legends was a loud fart of a final bonus level. In fact, the entire bonus world was pretty lame, but most notably the final bonus level, Grannies World Tour, 8-Bit Edition stunk the most.

The bonus world featured the popular music levels in the base game. Only this time different graphical effects got in the player's way as a means to sabotage their run. Such things included making the player play the level on an upside down screen, pixelating the screen to massive proportions, static and fuzz a la old CRT sets, and having a 4 x 4 display of miniature screens of the level.

What tricks does Grannies World Tour, 8-Bit Edition have under its sleeve? Why, it puts the player through all of these visual and graphical magical tricks to make going through a level where timing and precision jumps are necessary to survive next to impossible. Yes, jumping to the beat of the music is important, but when you have no visual in a section where you're running up a shaft filled with spikes on either side of the wall, this becomes mighty tricky, and frustratingly so. It's not a hard level because of its design; it's purely because of the cheap graphical tricks in action that makes the level so unnecessarily and aggravatingly difficult. That is not good or fun level design, no matter how you slice it.

Demolition Man - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2, XBX, PC)

We mentioned Supply Lines from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in a previous volume of Bad Levels in Gaming History. Now we look at San Andreas' predecessor with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and its ultra annoying mission Demolition Man. A key difference between Supply Lines and Demolition Man is that the former is an optional mission, although incredible unfair, while the latter is a mandatory story mission.

What does Demolition Man entail? Well, actually the demolition here comes from a miniature RC helicopter which protagonist Tommy Vercetti is forced to pilot through a multi-story building being constructed. The goal is to drop bombs at several key locations, and this is all the while workers take potshots and attack your hard-to-control toy helicopter as you fly it through the construction site.

Not only is the helicopter a pain to move around the tiny, cramped spaces offered by the building under constructed, but the goons trying to bat your copter down are quite persistent. Plus, did I mention you have a limited amount of time to do all this? What all this adds up to is a mission that is worth praising for trying to keep Vice City's mission variety fresh, but one that fails in being anything close to fun.

Mos Eisley and Beggar's Canyon - Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (N64, PC)

With it being exactly one month until the North American release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it seems like the perfect opportunity to dig deep into the Star Wars series of games, particularly Shadows of the Empire. Now, this game was a fantastic early 3D Star Wars game for the Nintendo 64, releasing the same holiday season as the system itself. A PC port released the following September in North America.

While the opening level is indeed one of the game's best, a different vehicle mission holds some notoriety in these parts of SuperPhillip Central. It's the mission that takes place in Mos Eisley and Beggar's Canyon, a speeder bike run through both locales. It has Dash Rendar chasing after several bikes, having the player attempt to careen through the tight and narrow spaces of the course while trying to smash into the bikes, jostling them into walls.

This level is, dare I say, fun in some regards, but it's also a nightmare in others. The controls aren't the tightest, and the narrow passageways that you have to go through and tricky turns make for a ride that is less than fantastic. It's a problematic level in many forms of the word, but thankfully, it's just one rough level in an otherwise enjoyable early 3D Star Wars game.

Death Mountain - Zelda II: Adventures of Link (NES)

A bad level can easily be well designed or at least designed competently. However, in Death Mountain's case from Zelda II: Adventure of Link, the area in particular seems to do more in the way of being designed to frustrate and aggravate the player rather than make them feel fairly challenged.

Death Mountain is a labyrinth of caves that offer the game's hardest regular enemies as well as troublesome platforming challenges. Throw in many dead ends, as a maze is wont to have, and you are dealing with a truly difficult area of the game in an already difficult title to begin with.

To have a chance of surviving Death Mountain, your Link needs to have a fair amount of health, magic, and other attributes that most likely need to be grinded to high levels just to stand said chance. It's too annoying of a place to pass as anything but bad by level standards because if you need to grind in an already grind-heavy game to stand a chance of survival, then you know your level isn't very good. At least this is the argument that SuperPhillip Central presents. Do you agree?

SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs - Really Retro Edition

As is customary most of the time at the start of the work week, SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs are here to soothe you with their sultry songs from video games both past and present. This edition is all retro with music from systems like the NES, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and Sega Saturn.

We start off with the action-packed Radiant Silvergun. Then we kick some ninja butt with The Revenge of Shinobi. Next, Top Gear (no relation to the car-enthusiast show of the same name) and Contra get their time in the sun. Lastly, Ninja Gaiden's NES debut ends this edition.

If you want to take a trip back into the past with past VGM volumes, look no further than the VGM Database.

v1006. Radiant Silvergun (SAT) - Return (Early Take)

We begin this edition of SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs with the most recent console in this edition, the Sega Saturn. That's how retro we're going with this edition, dear friends! Radiant Silvergun's soundtrack was composed by the great Hitoshi Sakimoto, a man who went on to compose one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, Final Fantasy Tactics.

v1007. The Revenge of Shinobi (GEN) - China Town

Yuzo Koshiro is one of the most impressive video game soundtrack composers around, and his early works really rock. Not literally, as this song from The Revenge of Shinobi's China Town level is hardly what you'd call rock 'n roll. Regardless, Mr. Koshiro's works both past and present never manage to fail to impress, if I do say so myself.

v1008. Top Gear (SNES) - Track 1

Kemco and Gremlin Graphics teamed up to release this 1992 Super Nintendo release, Top Gear-- known as Top Racer in Japan. Top Gear is a notable game in the Super Nintendo's library as it was one of the first racers for the system. Top Gear also gets credit for having a sensational soundtrack, as this theme, among many others in the game, shows.

v1009. Contra (NES) - Ending Theme

All right. Time to admit it, kids and kidettes. You used the 30 live cheat to get through Contra, didn't you? It's okay. We pretty much all did. Heck, I'd argue that the first level, the Waterfall, is one of the hardest, making it easy to see the Game Over screen before even finishing that level. Still, even with 30 lives in tow, Contra is still quite the challenging game, so this ending theme is your reward for hanging tough.

v1010. Ninja Gaiden (NES) - Unbreakable Determination

Earlier in this edition we had Sega's ninja series, Shinobi, represented. Now we give our full attention to Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden. Watch out for those quick-to-respawn enemies as you make your way through level 4-2 on Ryu Hayabusa's quest to seek revenge for the death of his father. As many know, Ninja Gaiden would be rebooted on the Xbox, even having THIS game as an unlockable bonus.

PictoParty (Wii U eShop) Review

We're halfway through the month of November and there is no first review for the month in sight! ...Until now. No worries, dear friends, SuperPhillip Central has a wide amount of games we're covering from now until the end of the month, so have no fear!

Our first review of the month is a Wii U eShop game that released a couple of weeks ago. If you know Pictionary, then you probably know what PictoParty is all about. Nonetheless, does this game draw a good conclusion or not? Find out with my review!

Be quick to the draw.

Pictionary is an old board game that gives a player a word to draw while the others quickly try to guess it. It's decades' old, and it never fails to bring a good time if you have the friends and family members for it. The Wii U even had an unofficial version of Pictionary with its Sketch mini-game from Game & Wario. Funnily enough, despite the more comprehensive and complicated modes in Game & Wario, the Stortzum household spent more time playing Sketch than anything else in the collection.

It's about time that a developer takes a concept immensely suited for the Wii U GamePad like Pictionary and make a digital version of it. Enter PictoParty by Retroid Interactive, a studio mainly comprised of two individuals. While you need at least two people to play, which may be a roadblock for some less socially oriented, PictoParty shines as a great party game for Wii U system owners.

If you've played Pictionary before, then the concept of PictoParty is simple enough. The GamePad player serves as the drawer, given a set time limit to draw objects and activities for the player viewing the television screen to guess. The better you draw, the more likely it is that the other players will correctly guess the item you're trying to draw.

Obviously this is a drawing of someone throwing a baby across the room.
...Oh. It's someone being tickled? Riiiiight!

Obviously you're not just drawing random things. You get a word on the Wii U GamePad screen that you attempt to draw. If a correct guess is given by the TV viewers, then you tap the "Correct" button. If you get stuck or cannot figure out how to draw the word given, you can tap "Pass". However, tapping Pass can give you a time penalty. This penalty can be set at the beginning of a round, as well as how long a given round is, what in-game dictionaries like Food or Activities words will be pulled from, and if players can utilize color in their drawings.

As stated, you can add and remove any dictionary (or category) of words you'd like to make games as easier or as harder as you'd like. Obviously having a game full of only one dictionary, Animals, is much easier than having a game full of every dictionary within PictoParty. Additionally, some words used in the game are a little bit obtuse. For instance, I don't even think Bob Ross (RIP) could come up with how to accurately draw an "inflatable boat" or "savanna" for players to quickly guess.

The addition of colors makes otherwise tough items to draw
much easier for both the drawer and the guesser(s).

You're not just limited to PictoParty's dictionaries, either. You can opt to create your own dictionaries full of any words you'd like. You can even bring your (im)mature sensibilities to the table and have a game full of dirty words. Just remember not to invite the kiddies to these games!

PictoParty is indeed an entertaining game, and it is one that even had my mom enjoying it, constantly saying "let's do just ONE more round". After about four more rounds, we were finally done that evening. However, at the same time, if you already own a copy of Pictionary, you pretty much own a physical version of PictoParty. It's just with Retroid Interactive's game you don't have to fumble with pencils, pens, cards, paper, and the like. It's all streamlined with PictoParty. Still, if you're looking for a more modern version of Pictionary, then PictoParty is an absolute joy for family members and friends to spend a riveting evening around the TV and Wii U GamePad for.

[SPC Says: B-]

Review copy provided by Retroid Interactive.