Ninety-Nine Nights

There was a time, about 10 years ago, when Dynasty Warriors was new and exciting. Fast-forward to the present, however, and the game has changed so little over its dozens of iterations that the very sight of it – or even any game that looks like it – is enough to send cynical gamers’ eyes rolling back in their sockets. That, along with knowledge of its underwhelming 2006 predecessor, is why we were tempted to ignore the shit out of Ninety-Nine Nights II (aka N3II) when publisher Konami rolled it out during last night’s press event.

If we had, though, we would have missed out on something cool. Yes, Ninety-Nine Nights II is a Dynasty Warriors-style, slash ‘em-up brawler, wherein your one-man army takes on dozens of generic-looking enemies at once and sends battered corpses flying with every sword stroke. Yes, it’s the follow-up to a game that thudded into the Xbox 360’s post-launch library, didn’t leave much of an impression and was quickly forgotten. But it’s a game without Dynasty Warriors’ characteristic blandness, and what we played was both surprisingly fun and balls-hard.

Strap on your girdle of iron and bra of metallic feathers, it's time to cut up a bunch of goblin bastards. At first, Ninety-Nine Nights appears to be based on a one-dimensional hack/slash concept, but after sitting down with the game's developer, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, we can see the method to the madness. Our first impression of this title confused us a bit, as the game itself seemed to be no more than a really impressive Dynasty Warriors clone. You jog your character around a dusty battlefield,

Like the hatch in Lost or the appeal of Ashlee Simpson, Ninety-Nine Nights shrouds itself in impenetrable mystery. Nobody knows much about this Xbox 360 exclusive except that it's slated for an April 20th release in Japan, but weve uncovered a few delicious tidbits of info, including some interesting