Dynasty Warriors 9 Multiplayer Split Screen

[Tyler Bannowsky]

DuringKoei Tecmo's second stream during the Tokyo Game Show 2020, the company announced the next mainline entry in the Dynasty Warriors series. Not jumping to 10 just yet, the follow up to the disaster that was Dynasty Warriors 9 will be an Empires expansion to said horrible game. Thankfully, Koei Tecmo has listened to fans and will be dropping the open-world aspects of its predecessor. Now there's an actual chance this game might be decent.

Heading to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch in early 2021, the main focus of 9: Empires will be on "Castle Siege" battles. Set on a series of individual maps, these castle battles will include the larger numbers from 9, just with an actual framerate and game design that isn't centered around menial tasks. We don't know if crafting is completely removed, but it seems it will be heavily pared back.

9: Empires will also reintroduce the character creation tool from previous Empires games, but with a twist. The rather robust character tools from Nioh 2 will be getting repurposed and expanded in here, so you'll be able to go wild with your custom characters. In another nice touch, split-screen multiplayer will also make a return after its grave omission in 9.

On paper, all of this sounds good. The Empires expansions are typically better than the main games and the removal of open-world features should bring Dynasty Warriors back to what it does well: create massive battles. While the idea of a huge, free-roaming ancient China was tantalizing, I just don't believe that Koei Tecmo has the skill to pull it off yet.

It will be interesting to see what the narrative design of 9: Empires is. These titles are usually "What If" scenarios that go in a completely different direction from the main games. With basically everyone being upset with Dynasty Warriors 9, Koei Tecmo could include a more streamlined plot here to appease fans that don't even want to think about 9 anymore.

It's also interesting to see that 9: Empires is heading to Switch. I hope that doesn't mean the other versions will be heavily compromised, but I'll take a scaled back Dynasty Warriors over the last entry.

Tank! Tank! Tank! is a game that came out originally in the arcades in 2009, long after most games had any business coming out in arcades. It's obviously inspired by the Earth Defense Force series, except instead of individual soldiers everyone plays as tanks. For some reason it got ported to the Wii U as a full priced launch title which I stupidly bought instead of Darksiders II (not that the Wii U could handle it, oh poor THQ) because I wanted a party game to play forgetting that I got the Wii U with Nintendoland bundled in. Eventually the publisher Namco Bandai tried to milk even more money out of this D grade title on Nintendo's worst sold platform that made it to its first anniversary by making it free to play as a downloadable title. For some bizzare reason, they thought putting the tanks you unlock behind a paywall, which is the only reason to play anymore than just the 3-4 player options, was a good idea. But I digress, this is a series about bad games that I still like (or liked) to play, so lets get to it.

Tank! Tank! Tank! is a game that fully embraces the schlock, you have an announcer blaring in your ear every 2 seconds about the ammo limited power ups you got and when you fire the biggest and baddest of them. Those weapon drops aren't strategically placed at a pick up zone that you have to get to or protect, no they spawn for some reason from the bizarre menagerie of insects, animals both extinct and not, mythical creatures, and animated buildings, iceburgs, and other non-living things that make up your quarry. Don't expect any interesting story, characters, or really anything other than blowing up a whole bunch of dinobots rejects and the surrounding local while trying to avoid getting squished in your poorly moving tank.

There isn't much in the way of strategy either. Each location is pretty much a small box with buildings in the way until they get obliterated. Each stage is pretty much identical, you're destroying a bunch of smaller robot animals (still twice as big as your tank, minimum), trying to take down a giant mythical robot animal, a combination thereof. Eventually, as you unlock tanks, each of which has their own stats that level up depending on how well you do in each level with it, you find that the ammo limited upgrades are even less varied than the tanks themselves, and most of the options are cosmetic differences that mix and match your unlimited ammo option, upgraded weapon option, or super weapon options.

If you find yourself stuck it's almost always because your tank is underleveled, not because there's any skill you needed to perfect in this action game. Of course the only way to fix that is to take your tank to previous levels you've already beaten and grind away the XP needed to get enough health and increase your damage to the point you can survive or actually take down the giant dumb robot beasts.

Yup. Dumb as this game is it's still a lot of fun. Blowing up hoards of Power Ranger Zords/Zoids rejects triggers a similar dopamine hit as the Dynasty Warriors franchise, most of the Gauntlet games, or the old R.A.R.E. gem BLAST Corps. There's something primal about laying waste to hoards of foes with a simple button press. The other half of the campaign, sending arsenal that would level a city up against giant robot monsters, hits the same itch as the Godzilla, Transformers, and Pacific Rim franchises. Now this game isn't as pretty as any of those for its time, no not even close, but that doesn't seem to really take away from the brain-dead fun.

Even more fun is the multiplayer. Yes you can play through the campaign with friends, but the best part was when one of you on the Wii U gamepad takes control of a giant monster that has a poorly mapped picture of your face plastered across its head, um, area, and tries to wipe out the rest of your friends while they get to shoot you in the butt with a giant laser called "Excalibur" or a myriad of homing missiles. We used to swap out who got to be the big bad by whomever got the last shot off in the death cinematic. This was, of course, exacerbated by the vertical split screen that was shared across all tank players. It may have lasted for an hour max at a time, but that didn't stop the pizza and mountain dew fueled gaming sessions from being stupid fun in the way only such parties can.

What are some good, quality games on PS3 with good local multiplayer? I've got Resistance 2 and can play that and modnation racers, but everything else is online only. I get that now it's not that popular but me and my friends never buy the same games so online isn't really an option.

Modern Warfare 2 has good co-op and split-screen unlockables and levels. Black Ops has zombies and splitscreen unlockables aswell as being able to play splitscreen online and combat training splitscreen which puts you against bots which you can set to certain difficulty levels. Little Big planet also have fun split-screen co-op for up to 4 people. If you only have 2 people then Borderlands is a lot of fun split screen although it takes some getting used 2 with like only half a menu on the screen. Resident Evil 5 gold edition has good co-op aswell

I'll check in on call of duty, me and my friend both have mobilized so sure, neither of us are into resident evil, or co-op gameplay for the most part, although we did enjoy HoD: overkill. How about other non shooters?

Personally, when playing alone, I prefer Sonic, because it is more skill based and harder to win, but if you are looking for a party game that you can easily learn: F1 Race Stars (but it is way more luck based)

Oh I forgot about F1 Race Stars. I had some fun with that too. Very much a pick up and play Mario Kart type game. DLC is nuts though (not even talking about the cosmetics - $4.99 per track? lol), but the game is also perfectly fine without those tracks.

One of my old faves: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

EDIT: Toe Jam & Earl is one that splits the screen only when you're apart, which is pretty neat...

Split-screen PC games are a rarity...

EDIT2: Searching for "split screen" on Steam brings up a short list...

i am not sure since i did not check your link, however i think its best to search steam for local co-op then just splitscreen because in my opinion multiplayer PC games are normally with multiple copies while CO-op splitscreen happens "quite" often.

...Is emulation "safe" to mention here? It's one of those gray areas I'm never sure of, since it can be entirely legal (PS1, PS2, and Dreamcast emulators let you use your own legal game discs in your PC's drive, for example). Anyway, without going into detail just in case, emulation up to the Gamecube, Wii, PS2, etc. doesn't take all that much power anymore (Wii remotes can even be used via Bluetooth), and older consoles in particular are a haven for splitscreen co-op if you run out of actual PC games to play.

In my opinion it's one of the better made split screens ever (or maybe I play a little split screen games...) because when 2 characters are in the same place it actually doesn't split the screen anymore, cause what for? And when they get further away it just behaves like normal split screen.

The HD generation is when console online multiplayer came into its own. The PS3 and Xbox 360 paved the way for the current marketplace. Digital games became a constant thing, as well as massive online experiences that blew everything before it out of the water.

Updated on April 25, 2023, by Michael Llewellyn: It is hard to fathom that the PlayStation 3 is already two generations old. The PS3 and the Xbox 360 were the first machines to utilize HD televisions, playing a big part in why so many titles from that era still hold up in the modern generation. Whether players want to dust off their old machines or buy a second-hand PS3, there is a solid library of games covering all genres, including local co-op games. Couch co-op is a great reason to play the PS3 again, and this list has been updated to include more forgotten but fun couch co-op games.

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