Ninety Nine Nights
Verdict: Repetitive, derivative button basher.
Platform: Xbox 360
Rating: 2½/5
Like a pavement trader selling knock off perfume, Ninety Nine Nights has definite whiffs of Otogi, Kingdom Under Fire and Dynasty Warriors about it as it attempts to abuse the power of the 360 to raise the carnage bar in the hack n’ slash genre.
With awful voice acting in check you lead your army into battle against roguish goblins and assorted fantasy cliches and plough your way through their ranks with fantastic looking neon imbued attacks and magical nukes.
The armies can number in the thousands and things are at their most intense when the screen is impressively awash with generic, hard to distinguish soldiers as both sides collide in a confusing brawl.
Thankfully you can’t hit your own neutered soldiers (who act more as a shield than a sword for you), so mindless button bashing works wonders. In fact it works too well as swathes of monsters fall before your mighty weapon with ease and when you’ve pulled off super-mega-hyper-doom combo number 3 for the 100th time, things quickly begin to lose their shock and awe.
You’d think wading into vast battles with your magically charged sword and cutting down groups of foes with Sauron like ease would be endless fun but without challenging enemies beyond the ‘i’m bigger, therefore I hurt you more’ mentality the challenge becomes one of making sure your thumbs are well oiled and your mind switched off.
It’s not all plain sailing though because difficulty spikes rear their ugly head and cause you to curse the lack of a checkpoint system where death means playing from the start of the long, muddled battle again and your thumbs cry murder. Judicious use of health refill chests and careful timing of genocidal magic attacks will eventually see you through to the next laborious level.
While the story treads familiar ground there is a moral subtext beneath the ‘good vs evil’ conceit which shows a darker side to the day-glo warfare. It’s just a shame there isn’t more depth or polish to the gameplay too.
Think toilet water rather than eau de toilet.