Loads of onscreen enemies? Check. Seemingly-unstoppable IP? Check. Button-mashing combat with a very light, uneven sprinkling of actual strategic consideration? Check. Felling scores of your foes in a single, badass swipe? Check. Essentially the same game-you've-been-playing-for-eight-years? Check and mate.

Have you ever had so much of one particular brand of drink, over an extended period of months or years -- a drink you really like, even love -- that one day, seemingly out of nowhere, your whole physiological system just rears up one day and says "no more of this, at least for a good while"? Right now, as you read this, there may well be a lot of gamers out there thinking the same thing about Dynasty Warriors 6.

(Author's Note: In my case vis a vis the aforementioned example, it was Sapporo; a Japanese beer, not Chinese, true -- but Koei is a Japanese company, and, well, the principle holds, dammit).

A button-mashing tribute to the Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dynasty Warriors 6 does what the series has done for a long time: Let you gallop saddle-deep into screen-cluttering scores of Chinese soldiers, take them down a dozen at a time with each mighty swipe of your weapon, and then go general-hunting to grind down the fighting spirit of your enemies -- and a fine task it is, even as an ongoing one, but Dynasty Warriors 6 just doesn't deliver on the evolutionary or innovative goods enough to quite justify this newest hack (literally) at the genre.

Available game modes include Free (arcade), Challenge and Musou (story). In terms of bang for your Ban Liang, the Musuo mode is the best choice: Saddle up with the warrior of your choice, follow his adventures, and level the heck out of him after every battle, choosing skill points to improve his abilities over time. For any given character, the Campaign will require at least a few hours to fight through, so you've arguably got a lot of content to cover in the game -- albeit, not without repetition.

Oh, yes: Repetition? Check.

One change to the series is the ability to swim through most bodies of water, and to scale fortress walls with ladders -- not huge improvements, but some notable changes to thank the old Ancestors for, at least. A slightly longer stride in the right direction can be found in the Renbu system, which allows players to dole out more damage (via newer and more impressive attacks) by continuously attacking the enemy and taking out as many foes as possible in a chain -- the better still if you can avoid taking a hit yourself. Unfortunately, this new system has come at a stiff price; namely, the elimination of strong versus weak attacks found in earlier games. The upshot is, you will play the game not only button-mashing but, in fact. mashing the same button. Oh well. It probably won't be long now before Dynasty Warriors 7.

Oh: Blister-the-paint-at-fifty-paces awful dialogue? Check. Just leave in the foreign-language option, guys, please.

All that being said, are there any particular reasons one might want to get this game? Yes, to a point: Simplicity, familiarity and all, there is a certain badass, slash-one-two-repeat enjoyment to be had in the simple mechanics, and the sense that you're rotating through this roster of mighty (if familiar) warriors and tricking them out one after another does have a certain beer-and-fishcakes appeal. Also, if History has taught us nothing else -- fans of this series are going to buy each new iteration anyway, even if the reviews sternly warn of purchasers fatally slashing their wrists while opening the packaging (seriously, folks: This almost never happens).

If the historical period and the promise of straightforward action appeals to you, you might first want to check out earlier incarnations of the franchise, or even the genre-mashing Dynasty Warriors Gundam (which, yes, is exactly what it sounds like).