It's not every day that you make a momentous, world-changing discovery. I'm sure that the first time Columbus spotted a craggy lump of rock floating in the Atlantic he was absolutely knocked for six, and when the apple fell on Newton's head and a tiny light bulb flicked on in the confines of his mind, he probably punched the air with excited triumph and rushed off to tell the nearest villager. Anyway, this weekend I discovered the answer to a question that has plagued Humankind's greatest thinkers for over a century - time travel, ladies, gentlemen and all those in-between, is indeed possible! Scoff if you will, laugh me out of the Academy like every other crackpot loon before me - or, if you would be so gracious, allow me to explain…

The path into the past is within our reach, for the powerful intellects at Microsoft have developed a machine known as the Xbox 360, a mighty beast capable of bringing joy to millions of people all over the world. Upon the machine's sleek body is a switch that will open a magical compartment into which a flat disc of plastic may be placed - and locked inside these discs are wonders untold. But one in particular holds the power of time travel - insert the disc labelled Samurai Warriors 2: Empires and prepare to be hurled back to a time when games had mediocre graphics, appalling, over-the-top voice acting and woefully unfulfilling button bashing where the gameplay should have been.

Back in time I went, and by God does the past suck! The first thing that you notice about SW2 is that it's awful. That's also the second and third thing you notice too, and by then you're tired of noticing anything and just want to curl up into a ball and roll yourself down a rocky hill until the numbness in your mind dissipates. It really is that hard to find anything positive to say about this game - and that's a tragic shame, in many ways, because Koei are a long-established company who by now must be capable of producing better than this.

The concept behind the storyline is not very different from any of Koei's 'Warriors' games, with the action this time set in Feudal Japan and centring around the in-fighting and civil war that has erupted between the various rival houses. You take control of one of 400 unlockable characters - albeit characters who mostly vary at an aesthetic level only - and lead your chosen faction to victory. Combat is taken care of through an almost psychotic abuse of the X and Y buttons, as you plough through ranks of enemies, repeatedly hammering the small blue button until the idiots stop getting back up. Eventually, after stringing together enough X-X-Y-type combos, your Musou bar fills up and flashes, indicating that you can now unleash 'a devastating attack upon your foes'. Musou Energy is an inner force that can be harnessed and utilised by great warriors to sunder swathes of enemies at once. Yes, it looks pretty and, yes, it certainly is devastating, but it's also only fun the very first time you use it. Even allowing your avatar's Musou Technique to link with up to three other officers and quadruple its power isn't enough to provide the wow-factor that this game so desperately needs.

The number of levels on offer is nothing to complain about, featuring eleven different scenarios and a number of historical battles to play through, all with varying numbers of stages to conquer. There are also almost 100 Policy Cards to collect through the completion of various events, which grant your officers new abilities, battle formations and tactics. They also unlock regional maps for your perusal, all of which do well in recreating the geography of ancient Japan. Unfortunately, however, this does little to distract you from the tedium of the gameplay mechanics; the lack of diversity between the large selection of levels would be shocking to anyone who hasn't played these games before. To anyone who has, well, you should know better by now!

A few years back I made the mistake of purchasing Dynasty Warriors 3 on the original Xbox and it was underwhelming even then. Dynasty Warriors 4 followed and was very nearly a carbon copy in terms of gameplay. This time around, Koei seem to have compensated for the complete waste of time and effort that creating the Samurai Warriors series could have been by pouring very little of either into it in the first place.

To call the game a mess would be unfair. To call it lazy development in the extreme, however, is too accurate to be classed as a slur. This is the 360, for crying out loud, the console that's given us Gears of War, Lost Planet and Dead Rising to name but a few, a piece of equipment capable of so, so, so much more. The letdown is that if Koei took their creature back to the concrete slab and stripped it to the bare bones then they'd have the premise for a half-decent action-strategy game. On paper it all sounds great; hundreds of characters to unlock and play, scores of enemies on screen at once, the chance to lead ancient armies of unsurpassed size and strength into glorious battle in single player or head-to-head modes. Unfortunately, in practice, the game - and the series in general - fails to deliver at all.

One feature that has been crowbarred in to make the game seem deeper is the New Officer mode. Pick a character from a dozen templates, alter the colour of their clothes and dictate whether they are built for speed, strength or defence, then play with them. Sadly this has almost absolutely no bearing on the control or ability of the character, and means that it's just as easy, and much quicker, to play with the characters already in the game.

The 'strategy' side is woeful too and, I kid you not, I played through a good few hours of the game simply pressing the A button over and over again during the troop deployment and resource management screens without even reading what I was selecting, and I still managed to win every fight. I, unlike Isaac Newton, did not punch the air in excited triumph. Nor did I rush off to tell anybody. I didn't even "Whoop!" and nor will you. Koei have been waxing lyrical about the strategy element, a facet of the game that sort of beggars belief with its almost complete lack of relevance. Sure, you can choose the formations of your troops, command officers to attack certain points on their own and even decide whether they are set to advance the fight or defend an important area to the death, but none of this is really necessary, as simply wading in and smacking X until you need to smack Y works just as well as any deep-thinking, armchair strategy. If you want to play with anyone even remotely intelligent then there is a two-player co-op mode in here, for those of you who want your friends to suffer with you, but all this really means is that there are two pairs of thumbs being tortured in the same room.

The sound is as unimpressive as the rest of the game, I'm afraid. It doesn't really warrant a mention at all, but you're reading this review to be informed, and so inform I shall; the music is annoying and the voice acting is some of the worst I have ever heard. I wish, with all my heart, that Japanese developers would stop making characters sound like either cutesy cheerleaders or cheesy American brats. It would help, believe me. Well, in so much as anything could help to improve this dross. The graphics are bright and for the most part don't hurt the eyes, but the numbers of enemies on screen are nothing we haven't seen executed better elsewhere. It's okay to have a lot of enemies on screen, as long as they are actually doing something. Standing around like idiots waiting to be smacked in the face with a four-foot blade is not A.I, and it's not what we expect from a next-gen game. You can survive the early stages by literally pressing the attack button once every thirty seconds or so and obliterating the nearest doofus; it's almost comical in the same way that some films have that 'so bad it's good' quality. The appalling draw distance on display has enemies literally appearing out of nowhere like spear-wielding ninjas, as if attempting to make up for their resolute stupidity by taking you by surprise.

Given that Samurai Warriors 3 is inevitable, it would be nice to think that the series could develop into something better but, since Koei have refused to even have their hair ruffled by the winds of change, this is about as likely as, well, discovering time travel. There are worse things than Samurai Warriors 2: Empires out there to spend your cold-and-hard on, like chemical weapons or a ticket to watch David Blunkett: the Musical, but truth be told, it would be hard to find as big a waste of money as this on the Xbox 360. Avoid it - and if you don't, then don't say we didn't warn you.

Reviewed by Mick Fraser for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).