Do you know what would be awesome? A game where you pilot a robot the size of a house, smashing other huge robots with your sword and shooting them with a giant laser cannon. Maybe you could add some tactics in there as well, so rather than just bashing through a level, you have to take control of portions of the map, kill specific enemies or protect your friends from damage. You could choose from a wide range of robots and pilots, each of them with different weapons, strengths and weaknesses. And haircuts. Also, your friends would be able to play with you, both in the same room and online. That would be a hell of a game. What's that you say? It already exists? And I'm reviewing it right now? No, you're wrong - I'm reviewing Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, and it's not awesome, it's a dull-tastrophe.

When it comes to Gundam, I will admit from the start that I'm a novice; I've never seen any of the films, read any of the comics, watched any of the TV series or played any of the games. I come to this as a virgin, if you will, with an open mind and a desire to be impressed. With that in mind, imagine the scene as I slip the DVD into my Xbox, anticipation prickling somewhere in the back of my head. Giant robots beating the bejesus out of one another - how could anyone fail to make a great game from that starting point? The controller clasped between my expectant palms, I load up the first mission of story mode, after picking a delightfully mop topped young man as my character. The game loads and I find myself in the vast reaches of space, but I can't move up or down. That seems a bit silly, but I let it go: bring on the robots! I enter something called a field, not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing, and I see them, a bazillion grey, clunky forms, looming at me from the plain black background. I charge forward, braced for a battle of titanic proportions, an onslaught that will shake the universe to its very core, the kind of encounter that goes down in the annals of military history. One man against a horde of unparalleled... oh. They're just standing there, waiting for me to kill them. So I do. I conquer the field, it changes from red to blue and I move on to the next one, where another group of identikit grey robots stand around and wait for me to kill them. This process is repeated, on and on, varying only slightly, until I finally lose the will to live and throw my controller into the bin, vowing never to play videogames ever again.

After a while, I calm down, remembering that I have to write an objective and entertaining review, not just "Stupid games, hate games." I try a different mode - Mission Mode - and stumble upon a tutorial. Heaven be praised! Maybe I was doing something wrong. I play through the tutorials, eventually able to decipher the poorly translated instructions. Turns out I wasn't doing anything wrong. Controller, meet bin, game, meet bad review.

The first problem with Gundam 2 is the combat; it's as shallow as a desert puddle in a severe drought. Calling it an uncultured button masher would be an affront to uncultured button mashers. You'll use the same dull combo to take down the same dull enemies, minute after minute, hour after hour, repeating the same combo to kill the same robots forever and ever and ever and ever. And ever. One button controls your sword, one your laser/charge attack, one a magical boost super powerful attack only available after you've pummelled enough 'bots, and one a speedy boost that lasts a few seconds. The shoulders and bumpers are for blocking and camera spinning, with the sluggish movement dealt with by the analogue sticks. For a game that hinges on its battle system to be found so dreadfully lacking in that department is criminal - this is boredom incarnate, slothful, tiresome and soporific.

The main aim of the game is to capture fields from opposing forces. This is done in a variety of ways. Well, one, really. You either have to kill enough robots, or kill enough robots so that some more robots come and then kill them. Sometimes robots appear out of nowhere, or ambush you. Then they stand around and wait for you to kill them. It would appear that most of the pilots in the Gundam universe are inbred hicks, entirely incapable of rational thought, blind as the proverbial bat and prone to bouts of self-destructive stupidity. Either that, or the AI in Gundam 2 is terrible. Every now and then another character appears and you have to fight them, in pretty much exactly the same way you fight the rest of the robots. There were times when I spent three full minutes flying from one end of a battlefield to the other so I could complete my next objective; a fine example of the shoddy and shambolic design that runs through this bad, bad game.

The graphics are last-gen awful; blocky, uninspiring and yawn inducing. The robots that you pilot are put together well enough, but the rest of the world is an afterthought. There are times when the screen is literally full of a hundred bad guys, all of whom look exactly the same, indecipherable from the one stood next to them. In this day and age that's just lazy - it's not like a few different character models would have stretched the 360's processor. There only seems to be one song, played ad infinitum as you trawl through level after level of black space and brown planet. After a couple of hours I just muted the TV. By kicking the speakers. The voice talent on show here is passable but most of what they're given to say is utter and complete nonsense and the rest is covered up by the smash and crash of the billionth grey robot exploding.

The online portion of the game is sloppy and pointless, with a few deathmatch modes and a hunter/target assassination mode chucked in for good measure. All of the problems from the offline game are, predictably enough, present in the online modes. If you're looking to smash your friends' robots up over the Interweb, I'd suggest Virtual On instead.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 is boring. And repetitive. And repetitive. AND REPETITIVE. If you're a diehard Gundam fan, or even a diehard Dynasty Warriors fan, then you've probably already bought the game and feel as regretful as I do for investing even one second of your life in playing it. Whether you're just a common or garden fan of games in general, or a love of all things Gundam and Dynasty Warriors, you should avoid this like the plague. It's badly put together, drool-splashingly simple and, all in all, offensively rubbish. Unless you fetishise the mindless smashing of grey robots then there is nothing here worth the price tag. Maybe one day a game will be made that makes the most of the promise of the "destroy giant robots" premise, but this isn't it - this is a turgid waste of a disc and an affront to the environment as much as it is to videogaming. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and fish my controller out of the rubbish, fix my TV and wash away the taste of this snore-fest by playing something better than this. Any other game ought to do it.

Reviewed by Harry Slater for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).