Lets Look: Dynasty Warriors

Dynasty Warriors. Just saying those two words can spark a variety of reactions from people. Some wont know what the fuck you are talking about. Some will laugh at you. Some will want to hug you tight and fangirl with you. Im in the last of those categories; I absolutely love it, its a series that I have followed since Dynasty Warriors 3 - I recall my first real encounter was on a PS2 Demo disk that let you play as Huang Gai, Guan Yu and Xiahou Dun on a Yellow Turban stage, many hours were spent trying to get as many kills as humanly possible :') Anywho, seeing as I promised stuff that WASNT just tanks, I decided to give you all an insight on this markedly niche game in the hopes some of you might be interested enough to pick it up and share in my appreciation :3

Lets start with a brief history, shall we? Dynasty Warriors first launched as a PS1 2D fighting game in the style of Soul Edge/Soul Calibur. It featured 14 characters that would go on to become mainstay characters for the rest of the series, along with two that would end up starring in a spin off series - Samurai Warriors (more on this, and other spin off titles, later!) - and was, all things considered, incredibly technical and required a lot of skill to be good at.

Humble Beginings for the mighty Warriors.

The sequel (used in the loosest possible way, all things considered) made the game into what it is today - a 3D hack-and-slash fun fest. The player assumes the role of one of 28 characters - each with their own weapons and fighting style - and fights battles. These would be selected from either Musou Mode or Free Mode, with the former being the characters story mode and the latter being a way to play any previously unlocked stage as any character. The main bulk of the game is in its Musou Mode however, as this is where you unlocked characters and stages. I think now would be a good time to point out that each of the games follows the same storyline; now hold on a second, I know what you are thinking - is this Call of Duty?! The simple answer is no. While they are all based on the same events as the 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' novel, which is in turn based on real life historical events, Tecmo-Koei do a pretty good job of making it feel fresh each time around, with different stage layouts, small changes in order of events, and the inclusion of more characters as the games go on.

Dynasty Warriors 2 - Even nostalgia cant make that UI look nice

Ok, so Dynasty Warriors 2 laid the foundation for the Warriors games as a whole, but aside from the hack-and-slash gameplay is there to keep me occupied? Well, for one the soundtracks are LITERALLY AMAZING. As in, probably some of the best in all of gaming. From the iconic 'Theme of Lu Bu' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcYaZLsjQwI to the simple but catchy 'King of Sadness' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AskzCj5brpg and even to the upbeat 'A Great Giant' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWVlWCVQnt4 - No matter the track, they all bring back so many memories of hours wasted away mashing my square button...

From 14, to a whopping 82, the Dynasty Warriors Roster is full of personality

For a little more background on the story, each game typically begins with the Yellow Turban Rebellion; the event that marked the end of the Han Dynasty and plunged China into what was known as the Three Kingdoms period. The rebellion introduces you to the leaders of the Three Kingdoms - Liu Bei of Shu, Sun Jian of Wu, and Cao Cao of Wei - along with the leader of the Coalition, Yuan Shao. After the battle is done, the leaders of the Kingdoms (at this point they dont actually *have* kingdoms, but its easier to refer to them as such) all return to their homeland and ponder of what is to become of China now the Han has crumbled away. This leads Cao Cao to devise a plot to unify the land under his rule - however many others thought the same. And so, the three kingdoms clashed, forged alliances, broke alliances, and just generally fought amongst themselves for decades. The older games gave you the gist of the story, but only since the 6th installment have they really tried to give any meaning to it. Dynasty Warriors 7 also introduced the Jin 'Kingdom' which isnt really a kingdom at all, but the Wei faction under Sima Yi's guidance after the death of Cao Cao and Cao Pi - the Jin kingdom also marked the franchises first venture into the latter half of the fighting, and of course the end of the war. Phew, so much fighting!

Zhao Yun, from Dynasty Warriors 1 on the left, and Dynasty Warriors 8 on the right

Character Development is one of the main draws to buying new Dynasty Warriors games - seeing the transformation of Zhao Yun is one thing, and the rest of the characters follow too. Now, this didnt really kick in until Dynasty Warriors 6 - before then each character was unique, yet still lacked their own... originality? For the most part it was hard to tell an officer apart from the regular footmen. 6 brought that originality to the forefront, giving each character bright and vibrant outfits, and gave us the characters we see today (the roster shot will show you what I mean) - every character is distinguishable by their face, their build and their outfit now, which is nice. Each factions characters sports a different colour; Green for Shu, Red for Wu, Dark Blue for Wei and Light Blue for Jin, with characters falling into the 'Other' category having no set colour scheme. Every character has a signature weapon too - there have been some switches here and there (again, mainly with 6 - I will talk about this next) but on the whole each character has kept the weapon that makes them... them. Zhao Yun with his dragon Spear, Cao Cao with his long sword, Zhang Liao with twin axes and Lu Bu with a Halberd. There is a weapon and move set for every kind of player.

Dynasty Warriors 6 time! They cleaned up the UI and focused on making the game flashy, woo!

Mentioning Dynasty Warriors 6 to any Dynasty Warriors fan will likely score you a scolding about how it was the series darkest hour - however I think it was probably the turning point at which the game went from merely *good* to *absolutely fantastic* - as I said before it gave each of the characters so much more personality with their new costumes and looks, and graphically it was stunning (although that was probably due to it being the first of the *then* next-gen consoles) compared to those that came before. It drew together a lot of good things in the series, but also threw in some bad. The combo system that we were used to from the old games was gone in favour of the 'Renbu' system - effectively a momentum gage that built as you attack that let you string together longer combos. This is probably why a lot of people hated it - it felt awful and made a lot of characters feel kinda bad to play. It also switched out some of the more iconic weapons - Lu Bu was given a wheeled pike in place of his usual Halberd, which left many fans sour in the mouth, but others were changed too; some for better, some for worse. However, if you can look past these two glaring faults, the direction this version took the series was exciting - maps were bigger and more varied, the story was a lot more woven in to the game and allowed players to empathise with some characters better than before (I used to think Cao Cao was a massive dick before this game, but afterwards I kinda saw his point and applauded him for it). The music also kicked up a notch, featuring a wider variety of styles and instruments, Dynasty Warriors 6 was a very rich, albeit different, approach to the series.

Dynasty Warriors 8 - wow, such graphics, many enemy, much musou, very kawaii

That leaves us with the series current release - Dynasty Warriors 8. It followed in the previous installments footsteps of allowing characters to bring two weapons to battle, with move sets being tied to weapons now and not character - so you can see Liu Bei running around with Throwing Knives and using Wang Yuanji's fighting style. It also improved this by adding a Rock, Paper, Scissors element to weapons in the form of Heaven, Earth and Man, with each being respectively effective against, or weak against the others. Costumes were more defined, more characters were added to the rosters, and stages are as good as they have ever been, although this versions Hu Lao Gate battle isnt as climactic as previous versions. Story mode offers the player a choice of several characters per stage, instead of the previous games set character, or even further back giving each character their own set of stages - this way the story is very cohesive and easy to follow for the player, while also not forcing them to play a character they may not like (although this is a non issue due to the weapons being universal now). Out for PS3, Xbox 360, PS4 and PSVita, and coming soon for PC, this is the perfect time for anyone to jump into Dynasty Warriors!

Remember kids! Do NOT pursue Lu Bu!

On a final note, I want to expand a bit on the spin-off games. The first and most notable would be Samurai Warriors - unlike Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors was set in feudal japan and featured, obviously, samurai. The likes of Tadakatsu Honda, Nobunaga Oda and Shingen Takeda all battled for control of Japan. This leads on to Warriors Orochi - this game saw characters from both Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors come together to battle a new and mysterious faction led by Orochi, an evil Demon God. Other than these, Bladestorm focused on the 100 Years War between England and France during the 14th and 15th centuries, and Warriors: Legends of Troy showcased the Greeks versus the Trojans. For anime fans, both Gundam and One Piece have their own Warriors games, featuring characters from their respective universes tied together with the Warriors gameplay I have come to love. Also announced recently was 'Hyrule Warriors' - a Warriors game set in the Legend of Zelda universe. Look forward to that!

Tanker Time - T-34, the Soviet workhorse - Part 1

Apologies for putting this up late, but I have kinda been caught up in watching Sherlock (I missed it the first time around and spent all of yesterday watching the first two seasons). To make it up to you guys, this will be a two part entry, both covering the same tank. Now, I know what you are thinking, why two posts on one tank? Well, the T-34 is a special tank. It was used a LOT. The T-34 used at the end of the war was vastly different to the one used at the start, while still being the same tank. Hence, the two parts. This is also our first venture outside of 'stronk fascist box tenk' territory too!

The T-34-76, the last mass produced model before up gunning to the T-34-85

The T-34 is probably the single tank we have to thank for the designs to come out of World War 2. It was incredibly balanced in terms of mobility, speed and protection, and when first encountered by the Germans in 1941 they termed it 'the deadliest tank in the world'. But why was it so good?

Well, lets start with the armor, shall we? It was 45mm thick, which you might think a little thin - and you would be right. It was VERY thin. But also very light. And very angled. This gave the T-34 and effective armor value of around 90mm on the frontal slope. This was simply unpenetrable for the early German tanks, and even a lot of infantry-operated anti tank weapons. This, paired with the excellent V-2-34 engine offering a whopping 500 horsepower, gave the T-34 its incredibly mobility. The T-34 could move through deep mud and snow with ease, while the German Panzer IV could not.

And now, the gun. In this part we shall only cover the 76mm F-34, due to it being the last (and most commonly used) cannon before moving on to being called the T-34-85. This gun could pierce 92mm of armor at 500m when firing APCR shells - this was overkill when considering that the T-34 faced at best around 60mm of frontal armor in 1941. Now, this isn't to say that the T-34 was a god amongst tanks, far from it. The tank commander also doubled as the tanks loader, which is bad enough - but the T-34 lacked the excellent optical viewfinders that the Germans had. This led to tank platoons being slow to find targets, and when they did find their target they lost all situational awareness of other targets around them due to the restricted fields of vision and overworked commander.

A T-34 in World of Tanks, sporting the 1942 turret model and the F-34 gun.

Despite its flaws, the T-34 was still a very influential design. It worked incredibly well, and was cheap too. While the Germans were designing bigger and better tanks like the Panther and Tiger, the Russians were simply churning out more and more T-34's. Costing around 135 thousand rubles to manufacture, they could afford to - by the end of the war Germany had produced no more than 6,557 Panther tanks and 2,027 Tiger tanks - while Russia manufactured 35,119 T-34-76's and 29,430 T-34-85's. The difference was staggering.

Fresh T-34's on their way to battle.

In regards to its performance in World of Tanks, the T-34 needs to play very carefully. At Tier 5, its armor is not nearly as impressive as it was against its historical foes - it can be penetrated by virtually every tank it can see. So, what does that tell you? The T-34 should use its mobility to get to a sniping position and flank its opponents, while using that same mobility to get out of dodge if needed. The gun is excellent if you can get the hang of the incredibly obnoxious aim time - fully equipped the T-34 can fire once every 1.7 seconds or so. While it lacks alpha damage, it makes up for that with incredibly DPM. And yes; you should be using the 76mm gun and not the 85mm gun. Why? The 85mm is just simply inferior. Less penetration and rate of fire do not compensate for the gained alpha damage at all.

Suggested equipment load out would be a Tank Gun Rammer, Ventilation, and an Enhanced Gun Laying Drive. This will speed up the rate you can lob shells at your enemy and also cut down on that horrible aim time. Crew skills are setup in the usual way - Commander training Sixth Sense and everyone else on Camouflage, before training everyone with Brothers in Arms as a second skill. Consumables are standard Fire Extinguisher, Repair Kit, First Aid Kit, although you *could* replace the Fire Extinguisher with food for the 10% buff to crew skills if you feel the credit price is worth it.

And that friends, is all I can tell you about the T-34-76! Be sure to stop by tomorrow for the second part, where I will talk about the modifications the Red Army made to this already amazing machine, and also what this means for the Tier 6 T-34-85 in game! Das Vidaniya!

Tanker Time - Mighty Box Tank! Tiger I

Welcome back for the second tanky post! This time we are covering one of the Tier 7 German Heavy tanks, the Tiger I. Often criticized for being a fat, unarmored matchbox, I feel it is definitely in the running for strongest Tier 7 in the game. Why? Well, you will find out shortly! Enjoy!

Look at the glorious simplicity of this majestic beast!

Continuing the format from last week (seems to work, not had any complaints!), we will start with some history behind this iconic piece of German hardware. Designed in 1941 to specifically combat the Russians T-34, the overall design was similar in most respects to the Panzer IV medium tank, but obviously in order to be attain its status as King of the mid-war tanks, it needed a certain... kick. That kick came in the form of a thick 100mm frontal armor plate (reaching 120mm on the turret mantlet), and the dreaded 8.8cm KwK 36 L/56. This gun was among the deadliest on the battlefields during its time, and coupled with the excellent optical equipment German tanks were equipped with it has been reported that Tigers have knocked out enemy tanks at ranges of at least 4 kilometers away. Thats insane! The armor, while seeming fairly thin for a Heavy tank, was deemed immune to the M4 Shermans gun in frontal attacks - another of its common foes.

Despite these excellent points, the Tiger I did surprisingly have an Achilles heel - it required frequent and often extensive maintenance. The engine and drive mechanism was, at the time, completely new and designed specifically for the Tiger I's requirements. This wasn't the worst part however - the suspension system designed for the Tiger was both ingenious and completely stupid. Each track was driven by 24 road wheels, overlapped of course. This meant that replacing a tyre on an inner road wheel would require the removal of up to 9 other wheels. During the Winter offensive on the eastern front these wheels would require frequent checks due to becoming caked with mud and then subsequently freezing. Some of the best crews could change a track in 20 minutes, but it usually took longer. A LOT longer.

A view of the Tiger I's ridiculous Road Wheel setup.

The biggest problem faced with the production of the Tiger however, was the considerable cost attached to it. It required a huge amount of fuel to run, not to mention the initial cost of production - it was more than twice as much as it costed to produce a single Panzer IV! Only 1,347 Tiger I's were produced by the end of the war (compared to an astonishing 3,800 IS-2 tanks fielded by the Soviets). For these reasons, even though it was arguably one of the most formidable tank designs of its time, the Tiger never really had a significant impact on the war.

An elited Tiger I - note the unhistorical 8.8cm KwK 43 L/71 meant for the Tiger II

In World of Tanks, the Tiger isnt nearly as infamous as it was back in the day - this is due to it facing tanks several tiers higher than the piddly Soviet T-34 or American M4; namely the Soviet IS, Chinese IS-2 and American T29 on its own tier. On unlocking the tank you should have researched every gun aside from the top 8.8cm gun, the gun you want to be using until you unlock it is the 8.8cm KwK 36 L/56 due to its superior characteristics compared to the others. Unlocking the KwK 43 L/71 will give you a considerable boost to your penetration and accuracy, while taking a small hit to rate of fire and aim time.

A Comparison of the two 8.8cm guns available to the Tiger I

First thing to research would be the tracks in order to mount the sheer weight added by the turret and top gun, and from there you can go turret -> gun -> engine, or if you feel it is too sluggish you can grab the engine first. Equipment should ideally be Enhanced Gun Laying Drive too buff your accuracy, a Large Caliber Tank Gun Rammer to reduce your already ludicrous 6 second reload time on the top gun, and a Ventilation Class 3 to give a buff to your crew as a whole. Your crew will ideally want to take Sixth Sense (Commander), Preventative Measures (Driver) and Repairs on the other crew members. Second skill will ideally be Brothers in Arms to further increase your killing potential.

Playing the Tiger I might be difficult at first, but when you figure out just how absurd its gun is you will enjoy destroying many an enemy during your travels. The mobility on this thing is fantastic for a heavy, and while the top speed isn't the best, its certainly good for its tier. The turret traverse is abysmal but when coupled with track traverse it is passable. The Tiger I shines in places where it can lock down an alley and rain fat 8.8 shells on its foes. Side-scraping will allow you to survive longer and also hide your Lower Front Plate - one of your biggest weak points. Why is it a weak point? For the same reason its a weak point on the Panther - frontal hits in your LFP will usually hit your front mounted transmission and set your tank on fire - Fire Extinguishers are certainly worth the investment when driving this tank!

I hope this has convinced you guys to look into the Tiger I as a Tier 7 heavy, and hopefully earn it a permanent spot in your garage like mine! I just love how strong it performs due to being underestimated :3
Next week you can look forward to an article on the Soviet T-34! Until then, keep your LFP hidden and rain some hell! <3

Tanker Time - The Mighty Panther

Howdy folks! Marc here with the first of many (hopefully!) posts about my days spent playing World of Tanks. This first post, if you couldn't guess already, is going to be about the German Panzerkampfwagen V Panther tank - or Panther, for simples ;)

Look at this sexy piece of machinery! Its glorious.

Okay, we will start off with a little history concerning the Panther. It was designed in 1942 to replace the Nazi's Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks, and started production in 1943. It was designed to compromise on some of the fearsome Tiger tanks drawbacks (we will cover the Tiger next week!) and allow Fritz to field strong medium companies. In comparison to the Tiger, it had a gun with higher penetration and muzzle velocity, front armor that, while slightly thinner than the Tigers, was sloped offering a much better nominal thickness offering near invulnerability to the tanks it commonly faced - namely the Americans M4 Sherman medium tank and M18 Hellcat tank destroyer. While it was far cheaper to manufacture than the Tiger (and only slightly more expensive than the Panzer IV) it came at a time when German tank crews were on the decline, and German air superiority was a thing of the past - supply lines were hit and many Panthers were left for scrap. Sad times!

A burnt out Panther Ausf. G from the Battle of the Bulge.

Next up - where does the Panther stack up in World of Tanks? Well, to start with, its a Tier 7 medium tank, this is a tier higher than the latest Sherman variants it saw, and a tier higher than the Hellcat too - however, don't despair - its statistics more than make up for it. With 85mm of frontal armor sloped at a very nice angle, it is capable of bouncing shells from a lot of Tier 6 guns, but most Tier 7s will go straight through. Side armor is an unremarkable 50mm and flat, so you want to hide that whenever possible. The Turret is fairly strong though, offering a very good 120mm on the front (covered by a very large mantlet - that's an extra 20mm of spaced armor!) means this tank is very potent in a hull down position if it isn't feasible to snipe from 300 meters.  Moving on, its main strength is its weight. Now, you might think that's strange considering I just told you to snipe, but hear me out. This tank weighs a LOT for a medium - in some cases more than same Tier heavies. Weighing in at around 45 tons and able to mount a 700bhp engine makes the Panther very strong as a ramming vehicle. It has a great top speed, but is very sluggish to accelerate due to its weight, so bear that in mind. Finally, the gun it is able to mount has excellent stats for its tier (if you disregard its low alpha damage) - 198 average penetration with 150 average damage, coupled with an excellent accuracy rating, aim time and rate of fire make this thing a DPM MACHINE. Like, seriously dude this thing can penetrate pretty much any Tier 8 tank from the front (weak point aiming is a breeze with the accuracy) and the few Tier 9s it meets are swiss cheese from the side.

A fully upgraded Panther tank in the garage

The Panther is an incredibly fun tank to drive, and will likely teach you a lot about various high level game mechanics (the use of hull down, and camo and spot range abuse). Once you get the hang of placing yourself at key locations, you will want to drive no other tank, believe me. However, it does have a variety of teething troubles from stock - first of all you will want to train your Commander in the Sixth Sense skill, your Driver in Preventative Measures, and your Loader in Safe Stowage. Why? Because you need to know when you are spotted, your tank has a rather German trait of having a front mounted transmission - shots to your lower front plate will frequently set your tank ablaze, much to your dismay, and a large amount of shots will hit your Ammo Rack - like seriously, the whole tank is basically ammunition. Not good! After you train those skills, we can talk equipment. You always want a Gun Rammer on your medium tanks (where possible!) for a start. A camo net can be useful early on (until you get second skills trained - take the Camouflage skill here!) and for budget tanking a Ventilation system will improve your tank greatly. You can also switch this out with Binocular Telescope or an Enhanced Gun Laying Drive depending on play style and if you have the credits to mount them.


Well, thats it for this week! I hope you enjoyed reading - if you have any questions, or feedback, be sure to drop a comment below! :3. Look forward to more awesomeness next week with what is probably my favorite tank, the Stronk German Tiger! As always, have fun, and remember to aim for weak spots!