"3...2...1...Strike a pose, everybody!"
Released October 2012.
Published by Tecmo Koei.
Developed by Team Ninja.
Version played: PlayStation 3.
Fighting games seem to have seasons, I've noticed. You can go for 3 years with not a single new arrival outside of small-time indies on Steam and other such services, until all of a sudden a whole bunch of them arrive, practically tripping over each other's over-muscled bodies in their attempt to sweet-talk you with their expanded rosters, shinier graphics and thoughtful tutorial mode for stupid people. So while Team Ninja can talk all they like about an organic process of growth over the many years that Dead or Alive was dormant leading up to its well-plotted-out reappearance, the fact that it's riding in on the coattails of Tekken Tag Tournament 2's worldwide hype train - which itself rose from the shadows cast by Street Fighter X Tekken - seems a little too convenient to be coincidence. Still, there's no rule saying we can't have more than one solid fighter to choose from at any given time, so I was more than ready to welcome a return to the DOAverse. And having been wearing my thumbs down with it for a week or so now, it's time to take a more in-depth look under its shirt. I mean, boobs. Bonnet, dammit!
Short answer, they didn't, really, though not for lack of trying.
A good look at the 2 most important features of any DOA fight.
First, to explain the basic rules of DOA. Like any fighting game that isn't Smash Bros, you control one of many colourful martial artists and are pit in straight 1-on-1 fights with an opponent using another of said characters (or possibly the same one). Each character has a health bar at the top of the screen which is depleted partially any time the opponent lands a successful attack; first one to clear out all of their adversary's health wins the round. Tried, tested, simple. With most of these games, it's the controls that make the difference, and DOA is no exception. Of your 4 standard face buttons, you have Punch, Kick, Throw and Hold. 3 of those are self-explanatory, but Hold is the difference-maker. Used by itself, Hold puts your character into a standard or low blocking stance, to withstand enemy hits without damage. When tapped whilst pressing the joystick/d-pad backwards, however, Hold is used to create a counter window; time it right so the Hold animation starts just as an enemy strike hits and you'll knock your foe down with a flashy animation for solid damage. Of course, it's not as simple as that, as you'll have to make it either a High, Mid or Low Hold based on what area you think the incoming strike will hit. Plus, a Hold can't stop a Throw, although a quick strike can. Hold beats Punch, Punch beats Throw, Throw beats Hold, like rock-paper-scissors. This mechanic has been in place since the early days of the series and still serves it well.
...well, alright, I'll be honest - it doesn't work for me. Not the logic behind the system, that's fine, but Throws can be hit-or-miss in this game dependent upon who you're fighting; certain characters like Jann Lee have a neutral standing animation that always seems to leave them a little too far away to grab. The other issue is more a problem with me than the game; I've always been a primarily offensive player, but the damage balancing in DOA 5 is skewed so heavily in favour of Holds that it feels like the game is forcing you to be defensive instead. And as Holds are performed the same way with every character (save for a few special 'Ultra Holds' for crazier counters and bigger damage), success becomes less about knowing your chosen fighter's movelist inside-out and more about simply fast reflexes. It doesn't help that with most characters, simply battering the Punch and Kick buttons at random tends to produce surprisingly potent dial-a-combos of up to 6 hits or more. Granted, there is plenty of complexity here beneath the surface; juggling is still an important skill to master, as is taking advantage of walls and the various 'danger zones' built into the stages, and most characters do hide their better skills away with commands that only the dedicated will pull off. At the same time, though, I've found myself repeatedly stymied when trying to play honestly, only to push past the cause of difficulty by embracing the Scrub Side and mashing the buttons like an irate chimpanzee.
Hey, look, it's...erm, that famous Virtua Fighter guy!
Uh...Daniel-san? Karate Jim?
Right upon booting up the game, you'll be able to muck around with 20-odd different characters. Compared to the mammoth rosters of SFxTK and TTT2 that sounds a little small, but mostly everyone is quite distinct, with many different combat styles covered between them. The character designs are a mixed bunch; it's pretty clear the devs spent far more time on the girls than the boys, with the male portion of the roster comprised of generally ugly dudes wearing flat, dull outfits. The core cast from the previous games, right up to DOA 4, all return (with the exception of Leon, for some reason) and there are 2 new challengers - Rig, a hoodie-wearing tattooed construction worker who fights with Tae Kwon Do; and Mila, a spritely redheaded pixie dream girl with an MMA bent. There are also 3 bonus fighters from Sega's Virtua Fighter series (a new version of VF 5 made its console debut during this current 'fighting season' also), who integrate with the roster with mixed degrees of success. Sarah Bryant's statuesque glamour unsurprisingly fits in with the DOA girls, and despite Rig's presence her flashy kick-based style feels unique and dynamic. By comparison, Pai Chan both looks and fights a little too close to Leifang for her own good, and Akira...is just sort of there, I guess. Honestly, I have a hard time forming an opinion about the guy beyond "he's just Ryu with spiky hair".
Graphically, the character models were the clear focus of most of the developers' efforts, and they are pretty dang amazing, iffy designs or no. Silky-smooth edges, multi-toned skin textures, free-flowing clothing that barely ever seems to clip, and the eyes - far more realistic than the anime-style ones of previous games - shine with surprising life. There's also a grab-bag of new effects that occur over the course of fights. The most commonly-seen is dirt - get knocked down and your character picks up corresponding scuffs on the flesh and clothes. Nice idea, but the textures for the marks are a bit low-res compared to the rest of the models. On the other hand, fall in water and your character's clothes dampen and even turn slightly translucent (yes, just like exactly what you were thinking), which is pretty impressive. And then there's sweat - as characters 'exert', their skin gets a damp sheen to it, and looking closely reveals individual beads of sweat across their arms, and even animated trickles of the stuff dribbling down their faces and chests...okay, the way I'm phrasing it makes it sound gross, and you only really notice it during post-fight win/loss poses, but it's kind of awesome nonetheless. Animation-wise, many of the moves and reactions have been carried over from DOA 4, and with a few odd exceptions they mostly look fluid and pack a sizable punch. The lip-synching is also pretty spot-on, albeit more so with the Japanese audio track. On the other hand, facial animation seems to be beyond Team Ninja's grasp at the moment; characters' faces never seem to change enough to present the kind of emotion evident in their body language or voice, with the slight spasmic twitches around their mouths giving the impression that everyone in the game has had a few too many Botox jobs. That said, though, these are still some of the best-looking fighters yet put into a game. What? Oh, right, breasts, yes, they still wobble around like they're in a cement mixer on the moon whenever the girls so much as breathe. Would you expect less from this series?
The stages, though, don't seem to have had quite the same love put into them - or perhaps they just suffered purely so the fighters could look better, I don't know. Whatever the case, most of the backdrops are functional enough, with a wide range of animated crowd members, animals and whatnot else, but the textures are never quite as sharp as on the character models, nor is the poly count so high. There also seems to be an unfortunate design trend towards 'concrete and steel' environments - a construction site, an oil rig, a rather beaten-down gym...they're all very brown and grey and dull, a far cry from the series' previous fixation on waterfalls, cherry blossoms, enormous pagoda towers and fireworks. Luckily, a few properly beautiful designs survived the transition. I should also probably mention the danger zones here - they seem to be a divisive point amongst the fan base. Basically, knocking your enemy against a wall in certain parts of any given stage (and almost every stage has at least one point like this) causes them to be knocked silly by exploding machinery or a rocket launcher or some friggin' death lasers, giving them a pretty sizable damage bonus on top of the points for the basic wall hit. These events certainly look eye-catching to spectators, and some of them (especially those at the circus stage) are mad enough to be hilarious, but they overstay their welcome pretty quickly, and you'll likely wind up turning them off after the first few hours.
Just one of the riveting action scenes awaiting you in DOA 5's Story mode!
They stab each other in the eyes with their chopsticks 2 seconds later.
For solo players, DOA 5's main draw is its Story Mode, which continues the work of Chronicle mode from Dimensions in giving the game a single, strong narrative rather than individual wacky ending cutscenes for the cast. A few more lessons seem to have been learned from Mortal Kombat 9 this time around too, as each new 'chapter' forces you to play as a different character, showing how they slot into the tale over the course of 3 or 4 preset battles. Additionally, each fight gives you an optional target to meet, usually tied in with a particular mechanic - land 3 high counter holds, hit the opponent into Critical Burst, etc. In earlier stages it does a good, unobtrusive job of forcing new players to learn how the game works, but the fact that you can win all the fights whilst avoiding the objectives (and take it from me, it's easier to do so in the later chapters) means it's not quite so thorough a tutorial as Chronicle was. Also, as with MK9, a few members of the roster never get their own chapter despite appearing in cutscenes and other characters' chapters (Christie and Lisa spring to mind, there may be more), which makes them come off as jabronis. As for the story itself, it's...all over the place, really. When you're not being whisked away for comedy non-sequitur interludes that amount to nothing, you'll be focusing on one of two stories - the DOA tournament itself, or the ongoing saga of Kasumi, the World's Shittiest Ninja. These two tales never really join together into one, and that's unfortunate, as the various ninja characters (who are treated as uber-god-tier superfighters, just like in Dimensions) never bother showing up for the tournament, thus rendering it a little obsolete. Hell, even the fighter who wins the tourney shrugs it off like it's nothing! What the hell?! Most of the writing is goofy, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, and the English voice cast do a pretty good job with it under the circumstances. The Japanese characters sound a lot less bored than they did in Dimensions, which helps things immeasurably, but things still come grinding to a halt when either the main heroine or arch-villain turn up. Kasumi is just too damn wet to work as a convincing protagonist; her under-aged face and squeaky voice never carry the necessary strength to garner the player's sympathy OR make her seem like a credible champion who can succeed where others failed. Meanwhile, Victor Donovan is still - still! - neither a playable character nor a non-playable boss enemy. He's just some dude who turns up in some cutscenes. Compared to the imposing physicality of someone like Shao Khan, Heihachi Mishima, Akuma, or basically any other villain from any other fighting game ever made, he's a nonentity and thus it's hard to really give a toss about what he's up to one way or another, compounded by the fact that his evil plan here is the exact same damn thing he was doing in DOA 4.
Beyond the story, the mode selection is largely what you'd expect it would be. Arcade mode pits you against a string of increasingly difficult AI opponents and tracks your best performances, Time Attack does much the same but with a stopwatch, Survival tests you with surviving multiple fights with a single health bar, and Versus lets you throw down with a buddy in the same room or some asshole you've never met via online. I have little experience with the latter since I don't trust online people very much, but I'm told the netcode for DOA 5 is generally solid, so if your experience sucks there it won't be the game's fault at least. Extras are limited to bonus costumes for characters, which are unlocked by...well, the game doesn't like to tell you, but suffice to say playing through Arcade on increasingly higher difficulties with your favourite character should open up most of their wardrobe. There's also a gallery viewer for screenshots captured during fights; when you pause for a shot, the game lets you control the camera angle manually, so you can shove it right up the ladies' skirts. Or something less filthy. But mostly the skirts.
Verdict: I suppose whatever I say about a DOA game will always come off as a little unfair. Fighting games tend to provoke a certain sense of xenophobic loyalty to one series alone, so the fact that DOA isn't 'my' game means any perceived flaws stick out to me more than they would to anyone else. Even so, I'm a little disappointed with DOA 5. Given the time Team Ninja have taken to create it, it wasn't crazy of me (or anyone else) to expect a serious change, a sense of renewed purpose, like I once felt in the jump from Tekken 4 to 5. But whilst the art and narrative sides of things have clearly been given much attention, the game underneath remains unchanged. Is that bad? It depends. If you're not the sort of gamer who typically gets excited by fighting games, or finds them to be a little scary and too complex, DOA 5 will be right up your alley. It's probably the most user-friendly fighter out there right now. If, on the other hand, you're so confident and obsessive about your combo skills you count your own footsteps in frame data, DOA 5 will likely feel a bit 'all mouth, no trousers' to you. The heart of this series is a strong one, but in need of fine-tuning it just isn't getting from this installment - but on a surface level it's fast, beautiful and packs a punch. Mark this one as a 7 out of 10.
Beyond the story, the mode selection is largely what you'd expect it would be. Arcade mode pits you against a string of increasingly difficult AI opponents and tracks your best performances, Time Attack does much the same but with a stopwatch, Survival tests you with surviving multiple fights with a single health bar, and Versus lets you throw down with a buddy in the same room or some asshole you've never met via online. I have little experience with the latter since I don't trust online people very much, but I'm told the netcode for DOA 5 is generally solid, so if your experience sucks there it won't be the game's fault at least. Extras are limited to bonus costumes for characters, which are unlocked by...well, the game doesn't like to tell you, but suffice to say playing through Arcade on increasingly higher difficulties with your favourite character should open up most of their wardrobe. There's also a gallery viewer for screenshots captured during fights; when you pause for a shot, the game lets you control the camera angle manually, so you can shove it right up the ladies' skirts. Or something less filthy. But mostly the skirts.
Verdict: I suppose whatever I say about a DOA game will always come off as a little unfair. Fighting games tend to provoke a certain sense of xenophobic loyalty to one series alone, so the fact that DOA isn't 'my' game means any perceived flaws stick out to me more than they would to anyone else. Even so, I'm a little disappointed with DOA 5. Given the time Team Ninja have taken to create it, it wasn't crazy of me (or anyone else) to expect a serious change, a sense of renewed purpose, like I once felt in the jump from Tekken 4 to 5. But whilst the art and narrative sides of things have clearly been given much attention, the game underneath remains unchanged. Is that bad? It depends. If you're not the sort of gamer who typically gets excited by fighting games, or finds them to be a little scary and too complex, DOA 5 will be right up your alley. It's probably the most user-friendly fighter out there right now. If, on the other hand, you're so confident and obsessive about your combo skills you count your own footsteps in frame data, DOA 5 will likely feel a bit 'all mouth, no trousers' to you. The heart of this series is a strong one, but in need of fine-tuning it just isn't getting from this installment - but on a surface level it's fast, beautiful and packs a punch. Mark this one as a 7 out of 10.
I've got a friend who's crazy about Hitomi, so the last pic's dedicated to him.
(even though she looks like a 12-year-old)
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