I apologise for this weeks review, I haven’t been able to concentrate and I feel it shines through in it’s coherency. Being in the middle of a desert doesn’t help with my concentration. Without further hindrance, here’s this weeks review:
It’s hard to write about Dead or Alive 5 as a standalone product, I feel I have to compare it to previous games in the series, which is a shame in its own right. Dead or Alive 4 was a great launch product for the 360, which I enjoyed playing with friends and alone, but I don’t think DOA5 quite lives up to that name in its own merit. I’ll split this review up into segments to better portray my feelings.
Combat:
Combat has slightly changed from the previous games in the series, meaning it took me a while to adjust to the new control system in place for fighting. Character’s combos have definitely taken a turn for the worse in my opinion, making combat a clunky affair. In previous DOA games, it was all about the button presses that defined what your character performed, in DOA5 it tends to be reliant on the direction you were pressing before pressing either punch or kick. It threw me off, I used to be able to thrash people with Kasumi, but I was found at a loss playing as her here.
The same counters still work, but I found the timing to perform them have changed, meaning a lot of the time I was just stood there getting punched to death or countering the air as my character done the counter too late. I don’t know whats changed, but the engine doesn’t feel a versatile as DOA4.
Graphics:
Graphics have certainly improved over the previous game, but not a huge jump. Characters sweat throughout a match, dripping when the winner is declared; Hair is fantastically rendered and realistic. One place you can notice the graphics improvement are the stages, where explosions and physics are far more realistic than previous games.
Story:
I really don’t know what to say about the story of DOA5, and thats a bad thing. It all seemed so non-sensical, fights were started over food, or because someone disputed another characters dress sense. I felt like the 3 hour story mode was silly, and had such a loose plot that it was abandoned for the middle 2 hours. You could summarise it all by saying: ninjas looking for a clone, ninjas find clone, clone gets killed, everyone happy.
Pros:
- Solid fighting experience (not as good as previous games, but still solid)
- Great character line up
Cons:
- Deluded storyline
- Slightly laggy fighting engine
Overall, if you want to play a fighting game with a few friends then DOA5 will do the job for you, just don’t expect too much. It’s definitely an evolution from DOA4, but not by much.
2/5
