Dead or Alive 5

Game Info

With the departure of Tomonobu Itagaki, Japanese developer Team Ninja has been taking quite a beating recently from both fans and critics alike.  Fans cried out that the Ninja Gaiden series would never be the same, and to some extent, they were correct.  Ninja Gaiden 3 was certainly a change in form, with the consensus being that it’s the worst of the three modern titles.  So will Itagaki’s other flagship series, Dead or Alive, fair just as well?  Well, I can safely say that it hasn’t gone the way of Ninja Gaiden, and is definitely the finest entry in the series.

Before I go any further, I have to mention that I am in no way a fighting game expert, so you should not treat this review as an expert’s analysis on hit boxes, bounds, juggles, and all that fighter jargon.  Instead, think of it as a review from a casual perspective.  I can’t compare this in any detailed way to the Street Fighters, Tekkens, or Virtua Fighters of the world, but I can say why the series has always been of interest to me.  And that’s because of all the beautiful women and there ever-bouncing boobs!  Just (half) kidding!  No, it’s because of the lightning fast, responsive combat.  But if you’re in it for the boobs, they’ve definitely made a triumphant return.  Early on in the development cycle, there was talk of toning down the sexuality of the series’ females.  I’m not sure if something was lost in translation or if there’s someone out there who has no idea what “toning down” means, but this is totally the opposite of that.  So if the DOA “jiggle physics” have always turned you off, check yourself for a pulse.  And then stay far, far away.

Content-wise, there are plenty of modes to be seen.  The game’s story mode is, for the most part, surprisingly coherent, and functions as the games tutorial for some of the advance techniques that new players might not be aware of.  It jumps around quite a bit and involves around 3 or 4 matches with each character in the game.  But the main story highlight for me was watching Ryu Hayabusa kick dragon ninja ass.  It’s really all I need in a game.  You hear that game developers? Put a badass ninja in a game and I’m sold. Here, take my money. Get it done.  Other modes in the game include training, survival, arcade, and local tag-team or single versus matches, as well as many different online modes.  I did encounter a bit of lag when I ventured online, and that can be expected since the action is so fast, but matches were mostly pretty stable.  There are some good players out there, and I am not one of them.  I have yet to win a match- but I’ve come close!

If there is one good thing about Itagaki-san’s departure, it would be the complete lack of any Aerosmith songs in the soundtrack.  Instead we get some smooth hip-hop to go along with our traditional Japanese style classical music, and it really fits the series better.  Another big change that probably could only happen when he left was a complete overhaul in the character models.  Gone are the doll-like faces that turned quite a few people away from the series.  Now the Dead or Alive Tournament combatants looks much more human, and that’s a good thing.  But all the original favorites are back and new characters have been added as well.  There’s Rig.  He works on an oil rig.  *shakes head* And then there’s 3 characters from Sega’s Virtua Fighter series with much, much better names: Akira, Sarah, and Pai.  And they’re pretty good fighters, too.  But I must say their moves aren’t nearly as flashy as the DOA fighters, which leads me to believe that Virtua Fighter tends to favor realism over flash- totally not my cup of tea.

So in the end, I can’t see this being the type of fighting game for every fighting game fan out there.  It may not be as realistic as Virtua Fighter.  You can’t shoot energy balls out of your palms like in Street Fighter.  You can’t…I don’t know. What does Tekken have? Oh yeah, pandas!  No panda fighting in this one.  Sadly.  And seriously, could you imagine breast physics for female pandas? But I guess you’d have to call it “teat physics”, right? Man, I got way off track here.  What were we talking about?  Oh yeah, who is this game for?  Well, it’s for DOA fans, obviously.  And for those Ninja Gaiden fans, it’s cool to see Hayabusa being all ninja and stuff.  And to any fighting fans out there who were always hesitant to try it out, do yourself a favor and pick it up. There’s never been a better time.  Dead or Alive is definitely in good hands with Team Ninja.  And with it finally out, they can go back to fixing Ninja Gaiden 3 and making it actually good.  I guess at some point in the review I’m obligated to say this.  Ahem, “I’m a fighter.”