Written by Lee Clifford
It seems so long ago when the Xbox 360 launched, I remember taking my console home, excited for what the next generation of consoles had in store or me as I unbagged the two titles I bought with my 360; one was a shooter called Perfect Dark Zero, but the one I was excited about was a little fighter called Dead or Alive 4.
Dead or Alive was a series my friends and I were familiar with, from playing DOA2 at my friend’s on his Playstation 2 to playing on my original Xbox when DOA3 came out, Dead or Alive was always that one fighting franchise I genuinely enjoyed. It was a franchise that was easy to play yet still difficult to master, but it was always more enjoyable for me than the heavy hitters of the fighting genre like Street Fighter and Tekken.
Today, years after DOA4 graced us at the Xbox 360 launch, Dead or Alive 5 has launched and after a very long absence, it’s good to see an old friend come home.
Now, Dead or Alive is a franchise that isn’t completely accepted by the core fighting game community, as it’s dismissed sometimes as a simple button masher, but that’s part of the charm of DOA is that you don’t have to buy a wedding ring for your fight stick and lose out on your life to master the characters and their moves; it’s a fighter that feels very open and inviting to casual fighting gamers, while offering up a lot of depth for the hardcore fighter. Can this title help put DOA over with the hardcore crowd, or will its handful of reputable issues keep it from succeeding?
Story
For those of you who are new to Dead or Alive, the plot goes as follows: corrupt corporation holds fighting tournament, a handful of brawlers from a variety of martial arts partake, throw in some assassins and ninjas for good measure and there you have it.
Each character has their own narrative that guides them, and those they have relationships or bonds with, through the bigger overall tale. A sect of ninjas have their own twisted story of a brother and sister who must kill their sister for leaving their ninja clan (to save the brother no less) while Ryu Hayabusa of Ninja Gaiden fame plays a neutral part as he is friends with one side, but sworn protector to the other. Corrupt corporations hold inhumane experiments to create living weapons, causing a group of resistance fighters to try and put an end to it.
Not all the tales are dark and somber, while a myriad of comic relief characters still have their small stories about following a crush, finding a fortune or simply finding where their next drink is going to come from, the core story is very dark, but the comical characters offer enough of a distraction to keep the ride fun.
A big change from usual fighting games is that the story mode is no longer played through one character at a time, but rather the player takes part in one big story that’s broken into chapters featuring elements of each character’s individual adventure. This is a unique idea and makes the overall story flow nicely, but it can be a bit of a con when you finish one chapter that’s full of angst and suspense just to have it followed up with a chapter about a goofy comic relief character.
Graphics
Of all the changes made to DOA, graphics are one of the most notable. The game has a very polished and refined look that gives the characters and the arenas a more realistic look. Now, a large part of this is thanks to the merger of Tecmo and Koei; while Tecmo’s older graphics on previous DOA and Ninja Gaiden games were appealing, DOA5 holds a very clear graphical influence of Koei’s Warriors franchises; the characters look like they’ve been redone in the most recent Dynasty Warriors engine and it is a very appealing upgrade from Dead or Alive 4.
Now, it has to be addressed. Dead or Alive is a franchise that has a reputation (and deservedly so) of over-sexifying its characters. Women are usually very well endowed while men are often zero percent body fat and have abs that could stop a cannonball; it’s been argued that these are playful jabs at North American culture’s view of how the ideal human being should look (remember, this is a game made by a Japanese development who have in the past made some VERY clear jabs at North American culture anyways) but the game still deserved its reputation of being a battle royale of supermodels.
While the attempts for physically appealing characters is still obvious, it has been toned down a bit. The women aren’t as bouncy (though it is still in there) and have had their bodies reformed to be much more realistic, the men all still have bodies that most guys would kill for but they’ve also been made a little more realistic, most notably Jann Lee’s abs no longer look like they’d crack the earth if he fell on his stomach and the muscle-bound Bass has been slimmed down to look more like a football player rather than a truck with a face.
The characters look great, and while there are still guilty elements of not being realistic in body sizes, it’s a step in the right direction.
One upside of the use of the Dynasty Warriors engine is how smooth the motion is as well. Framerate drops are non-existent and it can lead to some really awesome, and really entertaining, cinematic moments. A particular scene featuring Brad Wong, a master of drunken kung fu, and Eliot, a student of xian quan, scuffling over the last pastry after a meal. The action was like something out of a Jackie Chan film and for a moment I felt like I was actually watching Drunken Master.
Another nice touch graphically is the environmental dirtiness. In fighting games the players are always clean, maybe some games implement some graphics to show a black eye or bruised cheek, but they’re always very clean. DOA5 has added some graphical flourishes to make the melees seem more believable. If a character gets knocked down, they’ll get back up with dirt or dust on them and their clothes. It’s an impressive addition but the sweat and water portion really is astounding. As the fights go on, beads of sweat begin to form on the combatants’ bodies, and say one fighter slugs another fighter who’s very sweaty, a sweat mark will stay behind on the striker’s glove of the clothing of the one being struck; sounds kinda gross but it’s a small addition that submerges the player better. Likewise the water elements work the same way, if two characters are fighting in a forest and one steps in a creek, water will be absorbed into the character’s clothing. Again, small feature but really neat to see that fine attention to detail.
Sound
Here’s where things get kinda sketchy. Most Japanese games usually suffer in the voice-acting department for several reasons: cultural and slang differences, different expectations of how certain people should act, and sometimes just downright poor translation.
The little one liners characters say before and after their fights are mostly done fairly well, it’s during the story mode that things can get a little painful. It’s very clear which lines were written word for word from the original Japanese script, and which lines they allowed the voice actors to get a little creative. Voice actors for characters like Hayabusa and new fighters Rig and Mila are quite well done and returning characters like Helena and Brad Wong have respectable efforts put into it, but some of the characters, namely the big-draw characters like Kasumi, Ayane and Tina, are so bad it’s genuinely painful to hear the lines delivered. The voice acting, for the most part, is okay but the ones that are bad are REALLY bad and it pulls down the rest of the performers’ efforts.
The music is standard fair, each character has their own theme; if you’re an American male your music is going to be a hard rock anthem while females will get techno beats. The ninja characters get tunes borrowed from the Samurai Warriors side of the Warriors franchises, and the comic relief characters get music that sounds like it should be in an old Saturday morning cartoon; all in all the music tells a story of the characters’ personalities, nationalities and purpose, nothing that will go down in history as great gaming anthems, but the tunes suffice.
The sound effects are well done, if not a little too brutal sometimes, when a punch in the face sounds like a bus hitting a tonne of ballistic jelly, you may want to tone down the foley a bit.
Gameplay
DOA5 doesn’t stray from its roots. It’s typical tournament fighter style with exceptionally responsive controls that, even though it IS a button masher, makes what’s happening on screen look like sheer poetry in motion that could rival any finely choreographed scene from a kung fu flick.
Online I had a few issues with ping, but it was launch night and I was playing with people from God only knows where, so as long as the servers get some attention that shouldn’t be a problem that lasts much past the first 24 hours of release.
What I liked
It’s DOA, it’s fast-paced, easy to control fighting action that welcomes all levels of skill. I respect that the over-sexification got turned down a little, and the elements that were left behind are confronted and given legitimacy (IE a comical scene with Christie the assassin and Eliot the student in a bar) The new graphics look slick and give a very real look to the players. The handful of new fighters are unique and a blast to play as and Mila specifically is a very likeable character. The bulk story mode gives lesser characters such as Bayman a chance to shine like the usual figurehead characters.
What I would change
About a quarter of the voice-acting cast. Either make the story light and fun or dark and grim or have two separate stories altogether as the bouncing back and forth derails what they’re trying to tell. The younger characters (Eliot, Hitomi, Lei Fang) are still treated like dumb children who can get a little annoying, specifically Hitomi and Lei Fang who have a few glimpses of having developed as characters, just to revert back to “the silly little girl” archetype despite the characters now being 20 or so. Eliot’s stupid hat is also annoying, it’s like one of those black fabric hats that girls wore a lot about five or six years ago, like the stupid chapeau Shia Labeouf wore in Indiana Jones, yeah that stupid hat, it sucks.
Final Thoughts
Though I don’t see it being a competitor for Street Fighter and Tekken as king of the ring, DOA5 is a welcome fighter for the libraries of casual and core gamers alike, if you can forgive some very poorly written and delivered lines then you’ll love the speed and action that DOA5 brings to the table.