Jimquisition: Dynasty Warriors Is The Citizen Kane Of Gaming

[cefm]

I don't know if a responsible unbiased game reviewer with an opinion respected by anyone would dismiss Dynasty Warriors as "just a button-masher". But the afore-mentioned reviewer would also have some historical perspective and context - and on THOSE marks, Dynasty Warriors comes out as one of the more pernicious plagues of the modern gaming landscape. The cowardly, craven, unimaginative spam-repeat of a once-successful title just for the loot.

I loved Dynasty Warriors 2 (I actually liked the side-scrolling arcade too, but that was a true Golden-Axe model, and bore little resemblance to everything 2-and-after) and I played several more (through 5 and some of the intermediate steps too). At each stage of its non-evolution I found the same game that I would otherwise love.....if I hadn't alreay played it a dozen times before.

So yeah, any one DW is a great game by itself. But when you set it in context next to its ancestors it's kind of disappointing.

 

[Moontouched-Moogle]

Thank God for more Jim!!

Great episode, I laughed my ass off! Mario is a button masher, and Dynasty warriors will never be the same for me. I may go get me a copy on pay day, now that I look at it in a different light. Which one to start with tho... hmm... I played a demo for one (not sure which) and wasn't that impressed. I'll look to the bargain bin.

Oh yeah: JIM WINS!

Hmm, was it the Strikeforce demo on PSP? I tried that one, and didn't really like it. However, I loved Dynasty Warriors Advance and Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, as well as one DW game my cousins had.(I think it was 4?)

Entertaining video, Jim! Your sheer insanity can only mean good things to come. I look forward to more.

 

[Vault Citizen]

I've never heard the word dynasty mispronounced so much in such a short space of time. Its a shame too, the video looked like it was going to be interesting.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

But... all you did was defend the game on its own merits, not explain why it is the Citizen Kane of gaming. Defending it as good is one thing, defending it as a benchmark that every other serious game will inevitably be compared to it something else entirely, and I didn't see that at all. A second part incoming, perhaps?

I'm amazed people are still taking the "Citizen Kane" thing seriously.

What Citizen Kane thing? Do you mean the use of that phrase by Jim? Or do you mean the actual film's significance? If the former, then it's hard to ignore since it was the platform of his entire topic. The entire time was spent saying, "It's not bad!" instead of "It's effing amazing!@!" If you're talking about Citizen Kane's significance as a film, then you should look more deeply into film history and how that film pushed the medium forward as a visual storytelling medium through it's use of cinematography and special effects to tell a story.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Dynasty Warriors? Citizen Kane of gaming?

Kyahahahahahahahahahaha, oh that's rich.

Now, that aside, I do agree with Jim. Dynasty Warriors is great because of its simplicity, campiness, and all-around FUN. Sure, I could go around and gun stuff down in Halo, or shoot stuff up in CoD, or whatever, but I have yet to see a game that has the odd, fascinating charm of putting you, a big weapon, and 1,000+ fodder in the same map and going nuts.

For that, I respect Dynasty Warriors. I have yet to see a game like it, and I like it to continue.

 

[Jumpingbean3]

If I remember right Jim is against the idea of "the Citizen Kane of Gaming" in general because the mediums are so different. Games, as he puts it, had a different start and when they first emerged they were a toy not an evolution of theatre and literature (though you could,perhaps, argue that it has become one in recent years) and that you wouldn't find someone asking about "The War and Peace of Cinema" and if you did that person would be thought of as an idiot. At the end of the day it's apples and oranges. If [insert game here] were to be considered by the majority as comparable to Citizen Kane in terms of importance to the industry and the statement it makes It wouldn't be right to call it the Citizen Kane of gaming because it wouldn't be. It would be the [insert game here] of gaming.

 

[JakobBloch]

Citizen Kane of gaming? No probably not. But they do definitely have their charm.

While Streets of Rage and Golden Axe may be classics and representative of a genre they were never really that good to be honest. They were just what was there at the time. The DW series however distils the formulae down to what makes it work: slaughter and mayhem.

I had the pleasure of reviewing DW7 for a local website ("to make it clear that I would never buy a game like this myself" he said while hastily hiding the DW2 he has standing on his shelf) and my conclusion was the the game hide subtle depths behind simple mechanics. The music grated on my ears every time it started up in as new map but it just sort off drifted into the background as the meat of the game began.

I agree with Jim here that the series as gotten a bum rap for no good reason. It is very much a game that is not for everyone but for niche it fills there is no substitute (this could be because no one other then Koei really releases them). I will also agree that it is one form that the evolved form of old titles take in a modern day. However another form would be the spectacle fighter.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Dynasty Warriors Is The Citizen Kane Of Gaming

Drunk with power, Jim Sterling abuses his position to start sneaking out some of his more ruinous opinions. In this episode, he divulges his love for Dynasty Warriors and somehow thinks he'll get away with it. Will he inspire others to confess their secret shame, or will he bring pitchforks and torches to his door?

Watch Video

My counter argument.

As you said, it is a "fun, turn off your brain game where you can slaughter entire armies that has so bad it's good acting." That isn't Citizen Kane, that is Transformers. Citizen Kane was thought proving and demanded to be studied to be understood. While the gameplay mechanics may be deeper then "push random buttons to make things dead," everything else about the games is very simple. Nothing wrong with simplicity, I like the kirby games which are as simple as one can get without making Pong. However, the Citizen Kane of gaming should be something that pushes all the boundaries and the limits of the medium, the hard pressed work of a genius who has worked his entire career so he/she can make that game. Dynasty Warriors, even though it isn't as everybody says it is, isn't that series.

 

[Duffeknol]

Right, so I went from outright hating Jim and skipping pretty much every video after his fifth one or so, to thoroughly enjoying it after picking it up again a few episodes ago. In his videos he usually hints at reading comments, so this one's for you, Jim: keep it up. You've converted a hater.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

One thing Koei/DW does better than pretty much everyone else is offer up a huge roster of people who have assorted personalities, and among those people are a lot of women, not just token women. AND not all of the women are doting girlfriends who are less viable than the male counterparts.

Some are their own women, ya know? Varieties of women.

 

[DanDeFool]

The Jimquisition - Abridged Version:

Jim: "Dynasty Warriors is the Citizen Kane of Gaming"

Most of the episode = "U MAD BRO?"

Jim: "Thank God for me!"

I lol'd

 

[ChupathingyX]

I've never heard the word dynasty mispronounced so much in such a short space of time. Its a shame too, the video looked like it was going to be interesting.

There are two ways to pronounce it, and both of them are technically right.

 

[Frotality]

jim, no one dismisses the DM series because its simple and campy... they dismiss it because there is 50 fucking billion games in the series and there really, REALLY is no need to support a series to game 50 billion and 1. if you havent found the DM game for you yet, it will never exist.

love the series, but after DW7 i only rented the others... there is just no damn good reason to buy them anymore.

 

[Toriver]

Dynasty Warriors 5 brought me some of my fondest memories of multiplayer gaming with my friends in college, along with Rock Band and the Smash Bros. games. There really is nothing like, to paraphrase my friend, "picking your weapon, picking your mans, and pressing the kill button". The series is a good series in that it knows what kind of game it is, sticks with it and pretty much nothing else, and does it decently well. I would argue that there are better beat 'em ups in the last couple of generations, more specifically the X-Men Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, but the Musou series is certainly not bad.

 

[Pinkamena]

Never heard of this game, but it looks fun.

 

[kuzaro]

Dynasty warriors is so good but so bad at the same time

 

[Mahoshonen]

To everyone saying "waaah, but there are 5 billion of them waaah!" Guess what? I can level the same argument at Call of Duty and Halo. And I can also proclaim with the same smug sureness that they are all repetitive trash because you do the same thing in each game with no significant variation.

So why should these games get a pass.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

More like George Romero flicks they keep getting back up with mostly the same content.....

 

[PunkRex]

I do love me some Dynasty Warriors, the amount of crap about the 3 Kingdoms I now know is ludacris, move bi*ch, get out the way is the song that plays in my head while playing DW funny enough.

Speaking of the music, WHY U NO MENTION MUSIC JIM!? DW has some of the most bad ass music in gaming.

It is really good for just going nuts though, especially after youve trained a character to max lv and revisit old levels to get certain items, your a true LuBu!

Oh Zhang He you sexy beast!!!