Samurai Warriors 2 hands-on

When it ships in September, Samurai Warriors 2 will feature five different play modes, with the new one being "Sugoroku," a weird, Monopoly-style board game that has players taking turns to buy up squares in an attempt to take over Japan. Land on an opponent's square, and you can challenge him or her to a minigame - like, say, running around and smashing boulders - that lets you steal the space if you win.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that the game still boils down to hours of slicing your way through crowds. Even so, we have to admit we like what we've played so far. The gameplay might be getting stale, but there's just enough cool new stuff here to make Samurai Warriors 2 worth keeping an eye on.

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Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.