Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce Hands On

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From these hubs you'll be able to depart in a team of up to four players for the missions themselves. They feature more complicated objectives than some of the other Dynasty Warriors games and tend to climax with a set-piece boss encounter (like a gargantuan, fireball-spitting, flaming statue, straddled by Liu Bei, for example) or some sort of puzzle, but either way, the emphasis on co-operation and teamwork is pronounced. Teamwork will also be required to take on the rank and file, however, because while enemies are fewer in number, their intelligence is more sophisticated.

Helpfully, you'll be given some assistance along the way, with a new fury mode ramping up the power of your musou attacks and a lock-on targeting system that transforms the feel of the game entirely. And finally, missions are generally shorter than their console counterparts, with time limits typically running to 15 minutes (and not 60 as is more typical for the series).

It's these relatively brief, concentrated bursts of gameplay that are so reminiscent of SEGA's online opus, tied to the teams of four players and all of the effort that KOEI is putting in to making sure that members of the Strikeforce community continue to be nice to each other. There is, though, another slightly more worrying comparison to Phantasy Star Online. Like Phantasy Star, Strikeforce will be released on a hardware platform that isn't especially successful over here in the UK.

A new lock-on targeting system makes it easier to manage the camera without those extra trigger buttons.

In Japan, the game makes perfect sense: you can barely leave the house without stumbling into someone who's absorbed, head down in their PSP. In the UK, however, you'd probably struggle to find anyone who's still using theirs. That wouldn't be such a major problem were it not for the fact that you can only play the multiplayer modes in Strikeforce over an ad hoc connection. You might be able to connect to other players using the PS3's adhocParty service, but there's no guarantee, yet, that it'll work perfectly. If it doesn't (or if you haven't got a PS3), it means you'll need to be in the same room as three of your friends, each with their own copy of the game, to fully enjoy Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce.