Screw dwarf lawn bowling. For me, it's all about bashing trolls. There's something to be said about the thousands of trolls and other enemies you can obliterate in N3: Ninety Nine Nights, the forthcoming collaboration from Q Entertainment and Phantagram. This Xbox 360 game may look like it's just a souped up clone of Dynasty Warriors, but it does have a little something more going for it. We discovered this during some recent hands-on time with the game.

The level we checked out takes place in the mountains, where a large army of goblins have gathered to show opposition to the humans. Aspharr and his sister, Inphyy, are leading armies into the mountains to disperse this army and destroy the leader, a goblin king. Inphyy, a bit on the impatient side, charges after some of the runaway goblins, when a rockslide separates the two parties. Aspharr now has to work his way around the mountain in order to reunite with his sister and help her defeat this greenish evil.

The gameplay does have something in common with Dynasty Warriors. The hack n' slash gameplay will be quite familiar to many of you, although the developers have boosted the gameplay. You can switch between the X and the Y buttons to mix up your light and heavy attacks, pulling off devastating combos. One has you impaling a goblin and slamming him to the ground in multiple directions, flattening his allies in the process. Another has you swinging your staff around wildly, until you come down with a fierce striking blow that shakes the ground. This is a better combo system than the one we've seen in Koei's games, and the final version should also benefit from other playable characters. (The demo only allowed you to play as Aspharr.)

There's also a power-up charging system that gets insane. As you kill goblin after goblin, they leave red orbs in their wake, which you collect. This fills up your first power meter, in which you unleash a shotgun-like blasting attack that leaving hundreds behind dead. While this is going, a second power-up meter with blue orbs fills up, and once it's completely full, you can launch an incredibly powerful attack that looks like something Gandalf would pull off in Lord of the Rings. A bright light shines in the air and fires a lightning bolt into the ground, causing a spectacular explosion. The two or three times we used this, we left a body count of at least 500 as a result, watching goblin bodies fling everywhere.

The game looks good, although it takes a little time to get used to the camera system. You can adjust the camera for a high or low view, and either go all the way in or get something that shows off more of your surroundings. However, keep in mind that if you tilt the camera too high, you can't really see that well in front of you. Keep it too low and you won't have an idea as to how many enemies surround you. You'll have to move it around for the "perfect" view. Past that, the level looked fantastic, complete with tall structures (where sniper goblins are perched) and hardly any kind of slowdown. I wish I could say the same for the dialogue. The voice cast sounds generic at best, with very little emotion.

One big problem I thought I would mention is commanding the soldiers. You have the ability to command them either to attack or defend, and assign them for left or right guard. However, they're not as responsive as I would have liked. Let me draw up an example. I order them to attack an army of goblins, and they charge right in and begin cleaning house. However, if there's one or two members of their army left, and I command the soldiers to follow me, they don't do it. They surround these enemies until they're dead, and then just stand around until they decide, on their own, to catch up with me. It's a bit tiring, and I hope Q and Phantagram get it fixed. That's all I need, an idiot army to be standing around while I battle a goblin armada on my own.

N3: Ninety Nine Nights isn't too shabby. It's rough around some edges and could use some tweaking, but it hits more than it misses. We'll be back with a full review next week. In the meantime, I'll be glad to share our dwarf lawn bowling league scores. Let's see...I got an 87...