Ninety Nine Nights (Xbox 360)

Being a big fan of the Dynasty and Samurai warriors series of games I was quite eager to try this one out.

The first thing you notice about this game is that it is absolutely beautiful. The colours are bright and vibrant and the character designs are spectacular.

There are 7 playable characters in total, each with their own storylines and mission objectives. However you can only play as Inphyy (the woman on the front cover) to begin with, but two other people are unlocked shorly after and the rest follow as you complete all of the characters missions.

When I started playing this, I felt overwhelmed by how satisfying it is to kill masses upon masses of goblins and orcs. In this game you can total up several thousand kills in each mission and thousands of hit combos. You attack by using and combining X and Y, and as you defeat enemies they drop red orbs which add to a meter that allows you to unleash a powerful series of attacks for a short period of time (similar to the musou attck in the dynasty/samurai warriors series) Furthermore, killing enemies with this special attack makes them drop blue orbs which adds to another meter. And when this blue meter is full, make sure there are loads of enemies around you because your character unleashes a massive attack that kills everything within range. Every time I use that move and kill hundreds of enemies with thousands of hit combos it is as satisfying as when I used it first time.

So, combat is fantastic, however I find that some of the character move quite slow and this can be annoying because some of the maps are quite large and you need to explore them because you find weapons and some items this way. Also, at times the character voices seem a little grainy as if they used a poor quality microphone to record the voice actors. Another bad point is that there is no online play, but I found the game was really fun the way it was.

On the other hand, some of the music in this game is incredible as it really creates a sense of epicness to the game. The music that plays in the opening screens of N3 is beautiful, if you have the patience, listen to it all the way through.

When you finish a mission you are given a ranking. I found it very addictive trying to achieve the A and S ranks on the levels. It's good because it is not ridiculously difficult to get these rankings but it still poses a challenge, therefore if your intereseted in getting the highest rankings you can then there is some replayability value for you. The same goes if you like training up your characater to the maximum level. Each character goes up to level 9. It's not that many but it takes a good while.

As well as this there are bonus features to unlock by completing the missons, these include character profiles and artwork.

I would reccommend this game to anyone who is maybe looking for something new to play. I was glad when I started playing N3 because, for a while I was quite bored with some of the games I had. I must admit, if you are looking for a good storyline and a game that you can be attached to the characters, this is NOT for you. This is just a fun, easy to get into game that doesn't really take too much brain power. So if you want a game that you can just switch on and get right into the action buy Ninety Nine Nights!

If you love your button mashing action games then this will hold some interest for you. The graphics are pretty good for an older game, and the game play is ok. It manages to pack a load of enemies on screen at once which is pretty impressive. The set up is straight forward with each character you play having their part of the story to tell. The problem is that it all gets a bit tedious after a short time. Another major annoyance is that some of the missions are quite lengthy with no save points in the middle. Many a time I had reached the end boss and lost, then had to start the mission from the start. VERY ANNOYING!!

To round it off, if button mashing mayhem is not your thing then this is best avoided. Otherwise, I do think that it deserves a go.

This could have been one of the best games of all time, but sadly it isn't. The game has the graphics, it is very fun and it has the best soundtrack of all games released in 2006.

However the game fails to live up to what it could've been. Gameplay is very fun, but it does occasionally get repetitive, combos don't feel as fluid as say Ninja Gaiden, there are no checkpoints, which can be irritating on levels which can take up to 45 mins to get through, and the story is broken appart into five or so different perspectives and is very poorly explained in the cutscenes.

Yet despite all of these flaws the game is undeniably the second most fun game on the 360 (Dead Rising is the most fun) and every single level gives you immense satisfaction in completing.

I would recommend that you buy this game if you enjoy a challenge and if fun is more important to you than innovative gameplay, but if not don't.