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By Kyle Johnson on February 2nd, 2002
Introduction E3 2001. Tecmo and Team Ninja announced that they would be releasing the next segment of the Dead or Alive series, formally known as Dead or Alive 3, onto the Microsoft Xbox video game console. Many were suspicious on whether or not this version of the DOA series would in fact be exclusive to the Xbox, as Tecmo and Team Ninja had stated.Well, the game has finally arrived, and it’s still exclusive to the Microsoft Xbox. But how well does the game compare to the previous versions of the series? How about the other fighters such as Namco’s Tekken, and Sega’s Virtua Fighter? Presentation Team Ninja must not have spent a lot of time working on the menus of DOA3, but they did spend enough time on them to make them amazingly nice. If you think about it, like they must have, the menus do not have to be perfect. Because how long are you actually looking at the menus? The life bars in game are easy to read, like they always have been. So nothing has changed with those, but then again, why would you need to change something that’s already near perfection?Graphics & Sound Okay, so Halo looks awesome, and so does NFL Fever 2002. But how does Dead or Alive 3 compare to the other games graphically? While Halo and the other Xbox games look amazing, it’s really DOA3 that does the Xbox justice graphically. The game looks amazingly better than the other Xbox games. There’s hardly a moment in a fight in which you wish DOA3 had better graphics. Even though DOA3 does have excellent graphics, it, like make other games, has a major flaw with its graphics. The fact when you jump in the air, and do a flip, your characters hair does not move like it should. It’s as clear as that, it should not stick together when in a flip. But truthfully, that “flaw” doesn’t effect the game, nor is it real important.
The sound on DOA3 is marvelous. That’s all that can be said on it. It’s marvelous. Now, listening to the main theme of DOA3 is another story. The fact that Aerosmith is the artist, that’s just…weird. How and why Team Ninja came up with Aerosmith for the main theme is beyond me. And I wish they had chosen some other artist for that.Well, the music in the game doesn’t matter. How are the sound effects? The sound effects are stunning. With every punch, kick, and combo, the person receiving the beating responds with a different sound nearly all the time. Now, why couldn’t the main theme have been like the sound effects? Gameplay The DOA series has really improved on their controls since the series first started, even since DOA2: Hardcore was released on Sony’s PlayStation 2 just after it launched. If there’s one thing that they did wrong with the controls in DOA3, it has to be the placement of the free button. With the exception of that slight error, there’s really nothing to complain about with the controls.The game really doesn’t have much to offer fighting fans. With it’s story mode, you basically go through and beat each character, and beat the boss at the end to ‘win’ the movie for the character in which you used. Well, what happens when you get them all? Well, that answer is simply nothing. You get nothing for getting all of the movies. Which was a big let down. Well maybe Team Ninja didn’t have enough time to put something in! That’s a possibility. Even though they had plenty of time to create the game. The truth is, with or without a surprise for getting all the movies the game is still astounding. All though the game does have more features in it other than the story mode, such as the survival mode, it is considerably “cooler” to go through the story mode. The DOA series has taken the Xbox’s power, and has proved to the entire gaming community, that it can handle the graphics, sound, and Gameplay of DOA3. Being able to knock your opponents out the window of a building, along with being able to knock them off of roofs and cliffs, without the slightest load time, proves that Team Ninja knew what they were doing, and that the Xbox can handle it. There’s no questions asked, that this is one of the best parts about DOA3, and the other DOA series games that included this feature. Okay okay, you’ve talked about the games features, but what about the combos? How do they perform in Dead or Alive3? Well that’s simple to tell you the absolute truth. The combos in DOA3 aren’t very simple to perform, while not being too hard to perform. There’s always away to knock your opponent out with some sort of combo, whether it be in a tag match and having your two characters do a double to team on your opponent before he or she can make the tag in, or whether it be knocking them into the wall and continuously punching and kicking them. There are always combos to be done in DOA3. Lasting Appeal To completely beat DOA3, and get all the movies, which is 1 movie per character, it usually takes a couple hours, depending on the person. But once you beat it, will you be playing it again? Well, DOA3 is in a way almost like Halo, which has different difficulty settings. With DOA3, no matter if you’ve beaten it or not, you can still play it anytime. With the survival mode, you can work to last longer in single and tag modes. But once you beat the story mode, I don’t see a use in playing the story mode part again, unless you feel the need to beat the boss again, just to show him who’s really the boss.The best way to play DOA3 is with more than one person. Preferably 2. After a while, single player gets boring, and you want to play against somebody else. Whereas if your playing against your buddy from across the street, you can prove to him/her that you truly are the better fighter on the block. Conclusion Dead or Alive 3 is a must buy, if you have friends/family over a lot, who enjoys playing fighting games. If your not one of those fortunate people who’s friends/family visits a lot, then your better off just renting the game. With the 5-day rentals at Blockbuster, that’s more than enough time to beat the story mode, which may or may not give you bragging rights. |
