Dead or Alive Ultimate – Review

First things first… This game looks “The Business”. I had to mention the graphics straight off because they will be the first thing to ‘hit’ you (pun intended), but not the last. Even though the two games are actually rehashes of old games, it’s easy to see that a lot of time has gone into making the games, well DOA2 at least, look great. But more on that later.

So, two games for the price of one?? Well it’s more like one and half!! DOA1 has not been changed much from the playstation one version I got years ago. It does look better than it did, but this is meant to be a port of the Saturn version, which I thought was less powerful than the PS, but whatever, it does look better than it did. It keeps the same characters, including the same unlockables. And it feels the same to play. At the time it seemed fast, but now it feels really quite sluggish. It does have Xbox live support though, although I’ve yet to see anyone playing it online (everyone’s on DOA2). It’s a nice addition, but it’s not the main focus of why you’d buy DOA Ultimate.

Dead or alive 2 IS the reason to buy this two disc edition. If you like 3D beat ‘em ups BUY THIS. It’s a great game. Easy to start with, but with plenty of moves to master (all the characters have approximately 80+ moves each!!). Plus you have the fast less powerful characters, or the big & slow hard hitting characters choice (Bass is slow and rubbish…Hitomi is quick and rules And then there’s the counter system. This is the key to becoming a ‘master’. If you can pull off counter moves exactly, then you can, and will, be unstoppable. It’s true that you can win by using the age old tactic of “button mashing”, but if your against a DOA counter master…..your going down, and in an embarrassing way. So it’s good to have a decent practice mode. You can have the CPU opponent either stand still (good for taking out aggression after a bad day), or block high – low, or attack. This is a great way of learning, and not only the basics. And your gonna need to learn. This game is T.O.U.G.H!! Unless your playing on the easy level, your gonna find the later characters a real handful. But this makes it so much more rewarding when you finally beat the big nose boss at the end. It’s a shame that the end movies are not as long as the ones in DOA3. But this is made up for with the opening movie, which is, in my book, fantastic brilliant greatness (these guys should make movies). It gives a bit more of the story behind Ayane and Kasumi, from when they were younger.

Replayability is high for this game. Not only will you unlock new characters (including Hitomi), but you will also be able to unlock 137 costumes!!!!

Now this can be done by either beating the story mode..again & again,
EASY NORMAL HARD
Ayane 3-7 8-15 16-20
for example, beat easy five times, normal eight, and hard five times.
That’s just for Ayane.

Or, and this is the quicker way. Collect all the items in the survival mode. Each character has three ‘unique’ items, plus there’s a prototype Xbox, and a medal to collect. This then opens up a second item collection screen. Once you collect all of these, you will unlock all the costumes, and the CG gallery. And if you live in America you’ll get the booster disc for DOA3. It takes a while (i’m still working on it), but it’s worth it.

Anyway, back to the graphics…they are, and I quote, “a bit bloomin bloody greaty great brill skilliant!!!!!!!!!!!” ( I quoted myself, but hey??!!). Yes the graphics DO stand out, and DO look great, really really. The people at team ninja know how to make the Xbox work. And this is the game to show to your Playstation 2 or Gamecube, and to some extent PC owning friends, and gloat. It moves fast, it has so much going on (characters and background), and there aint no jaggies, or if there is you won’t notice coz it’s going on so quickly. The fighters look so smooth, and move so fantastically (especially Hitomi). A lot of the stages are multi stages, meaning that you can kick someone through a window, or off a ledge, and watch them fall and crumple lower down, and then you can carry on smacking the taste outta their mouth.

Soundwise it’s pretty good too. With Aerosmith, again, providing the opening tune. And it works great for the opening movie. Plus the in game tunes and effects are great too.

Online is, the once I’ve tried, good. At the moment I really want to unlock the costumes (sad me), and to get some practice. But the game I was in, which had five other people in it, ran well, with no lag. So I think that if you go for the green bar games (Xbox live peoples know what I mean), you should be o.k. Plus you can upload your time attack scores. Which adds to your offline game.

Female aspect of the game??
For ages now Dead or alive games have been known as “those games with young girls with uber bouncy…..bouncers”. But I think it’s moved on from this gimmick of wobbly knock knocks. It is a solid fighting game. Yes the wobbles are still there, but it’s not the talking point of the game, unlike the first one. The female characters are not just there to make up the numbers. Most of them are actually better than the guys.

Review by Roy