Dead Or Alive 5 review: Style over substance

Dead Or Alive 5 is not the best fighter you'll play this year, but you can't deny its charm.

When it first debuted, Tecmo Koei’s Dead Or Alive series seemed like a relatively standard 3D fighter in the vein of Tekken, Virtua Fighter, or even Battle Arena Toshinden. Over the years though, the various fighting franchises were forced to evolve and stake a claim to their own particular brand of virtual combat. Virtua Fighter went for hyperrealism, Tekken went for demons and kangaroos, and Dead Or Alive went for, well, spectacle. To the extreme. Exclamation point.

However, the series’ developers at Tecmo Koei have also steadily been building a fun, intuitive fighting system underneath the glossy T&A exterior. At this point it’s no longer fair to simply dismiss Dead Or Alive as a franchise that panders to juvenile male gamers, and Dead Or Alive 5 is the perfect proof of that. That’s not to say that the pretty ladies have all been draped in modest clothing, but it does mean that this is the perfect time for a new player or lapsed Dead Or Alive fan to get back into the series.

We’ll come back to tackle the huge, heaving pair of elephants in the room a bit later, but first let’s discuss the game’s mechanics and content.

Be Like Water

Like Virtua Fighter, Dead Or Alive 5 relies on a very simple set of controls. You have a punch button, a kick button, a throw button, and a fourth button that allows you to both block and counter, depending on which direction you happen to push alongside it. By combining these various attack buttons, different directions and proper timing, you can launch into pretty solid combo attacks with any fighter. Unfotunately, this level of accessibility also has a dark side: Dead Or Alive has always been one of the most “button-masher friendly” of the 3D fighters, and DOA5 proudly continues that tradition. It isn’t just possible to beat both computer-controlled characters and real, living opponents by merely smashing your palm across the gamepad, it’s actually pretty easy.

However, this is where that fourth button comes into play. Tap that button and a certain direction, depending on what sort of attack your opponent is using, and instead of blocking, you’ll counter their attack and hit them back (usually in a visually spectacular fashion). Though this is a very simple mechanic, it’s also incredibly valuable to the Dead Or Alive experience, as pulling off a successful counter is one of the most thrilling things you can do in a fighting game. Instantly turning an incoming punch into a broken elbow for your foe is one of those things that the vast, vast majority of us will only ever experience inside a video game, and it definitely offers ample reason to practice your defensive skills as often as your offensive ones.

You’ll notice that I’ve been discussing mechanics as a universal system, and failing to address how individual characters can/should react to in-game situations. Normally that’d be the case simply because we don’t have the time to cover every single character’s best strategies, but in this case it’s because, despite aesthetic differences, the basic attack/throw/counter mechanics make all of the fighters surprisingly similar. If you’ve mastered your counter timing and are able to vary high and low attacks, you can use any character effectively. As a result, though the basic mechanics are phenomenal and intuitive, they also necessarily hamper the game’s potential depth (and now you know why the Dead Or Alive games have never been as popular as Tekken or Virtua Fighter with the hardcore fighting game tournament crowd).

Enter The 36 Chambers

So if the game’s characters are so similar, then why bother playing? In a word, spectacle. No hyperbole: Dead Or Alive 5 is the prettiest fighter to date. Not only because the game’s graphics and animation routines are amazingly fluid and polished, but also because the game features the most “realistic” fighting arenas available. Here in the flesh-and-blood world, if you’re asked to step outside for an impromptu street fight in the nearest alley, you’re bound to see trash and detritus lying all over the cement. Most fighting games strip out this sort of miscellaneous crap, but Dead Or Alive 5 renders it all in surprisingly sharp detail. Fortunately, the boxes and traffic cones littering the ground won’t actually affect the combat, but having seen this detail in DOA5, I find myself missing it when I play other fighters.

Though the random garbage won’t affect your fights, the Dead Or Alive series has a long-standing tradition of including explosive, dangerous elements in certain arenas. Dead Or Alive 5 continues this tradition as well, and its hazardous environments are as gimmicky as imaginable. In one stage, you can kick your opponent through a pile of steel girders onto the ground below where a tanker truck hits two cars, jack-knifes, flips onto its side, and explodes to cause massive damage to your unlucky foe. I know I said “gimmicky” just a moment ago, and I totally stand by that, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the spectacle of using the world around me to hurt people. It’s silly, it’s over-the-top, and like the rest of the game it’s entertaining specifically because the developers at Tecmo Koei are in on the joke. They know this game is totally ludicrous, so instead of trying to compete against the other fighting franchises for the best depiction of reality, Dead Or Alive 5 just goes straight for goofy fun.

Drunken Master

Unfortunately, Tecmo Koei doesn’t have the same level of experience in working with modern-generation fighting games as Capcom, Sega, and Namco Bandai, and in certain crucial aspects of Dead Or Alive 5 that becomes quite evident. The online multiplayer portion of the game, while functional, is nothing spectacular. Lag is a depressingly common occurrence, especially given the amount of loading time that elapses between the start of each new online fight. Both Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown offer virtually lag-free online experiences, and while Dead Or Alive 5’s connectivity might have been acceptable on home consoles three years ago, in September 2012 it leaves a lot to be desired.

In fairness, Tecmo Koei has shared plans with us to release a Day 1 patch for the game that should improve the online multiplayer component (as well as streamline a few other rough spots in the game), but as is the experience is frustrating.

That’s a real shame too, because technically speaking, the relatively poor online game is DOA5’s only fault. It offers a wealth of game modes, its combat is fast, fluid and most crucially, engaging, and the number of extra stuff to unlock in the game is simply massive. The bit that impressed me most was the game’s Story Mode, which doubles as something of an unofficial tutorial.

Like most Story Modes, the game shows you a few moments of CGI plot before tossing you directly into a fight. Though these fights can be fought in the standard fashion, they also offer “Bonus Missions,” such as countering low attacks a certain number of times, or hitting your opponent with an aerial throw. None of these Bonus Missions are mandatory, but if you play through the entire story while completing the Bonus Missions, you’ll find yourself very well versed in the game’s various nuances. It’s one of the more compelling in-game training modes I’ve seen in a fighter so far. Playing through the Story Mode is also how you unlock the three special Virtua Fighter cameo characters (Akira, Pai and Sarah Bryant), but the Bonus Mission training mode is just so useful that these extra fighters are simply icing on the cake.

Don’t Think. Feel!

I said we’d get around to it in time, so let’s just get this over with: Dead Or Alive 5’s female cast is disturbingly well-endowed. Overt sexuality is nothing new for the Dead Or Alive games — this is the same series that debuted on the original Xbox with a commercial starring slack-jawed teenaged males gawking at inadvertent panty shots — but the anatomical anomalies in Dead Or Alive 5 go beyond “sex sells” to what I’m sincerely hoping is winking self-parody. 

Try this: Start any game mode in Dead Or Alive 5 and pick literally any of the female fighters. Win the match, then take your hands off of the controller. The post-match victory screen will zoom in to a portrait of your chosen lady. Now I want you to count how many seconds elapse before her breasts stop moving. Keep in mind that these portraits only appear in full once the character has finished her victory animation, so there’s absolutely no physical reason for her bosom to continue heaving, yet these arguably sentient mounds of flesh continue quivering for five to ten seconds after the end of the match. They’re less like actual human flesh than agitated bowls of jello, except that the flesh-colored texture work is so lifelike that the entire scene could pretty easily segue into an impromptu David Cronenberg movie.

Is this sexist? Yeah, it is. The male characters are all peak examples of fitness, and pretty attractive fellows to boot, but none of them is as blatantly defined by key sexual characteristics as the female cast. That said,  the game is so over-the-top and silly that it goes beyond sexist and loops around to be simply cartoonish. You think you should be appalled by what you’re seeing, but it’s just so ridiculous that these hyper-sexualized women are impossible to take seriously. As a result, this may be the first Dead Or Alive title that is not glibly defined by its pandering to hormonal teenage boys.

Conclusion

Despite gorgeous aesthetics and a solid refinement of the Dead Or Alive fighting system, Dead Or Alive 5 arrives on store shelves with a number of strikes against it. Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown is far deeper, and a more realisitic, functional 3D fighter, while Tekken Tag Tournament 2 simply overwhelms any competition with its sheer number of fighters and rock-solid gameplay. Objectively this seems like it should render Dead Or Alive 5 instantly obsolete, but Tecmo Koei’s fighter is just such stupid, crazy fun that it offers an entirely separate, niche experience for those who prefer to be able to pick up a fighting game and instantly pull off some awesome combination of kicks and punches. 

Dead Or Alive 5 is not the best fighter on the market. It’s not even the best fighter to be released this month. However, it is very entertaining, and far more suited for friendly party play than any of its rivals. I can’t rank it as highly as the recent Tekken Tag Tournament 2, but despite this I want it to be known that I do recommend this game for fighting game fans. It’s a novel take on the genre, the counter system is fun and offers a solid amount of strategy (without a massive learning curve), and the entire package is aesthetically and aurally phenomenal. Go in with realistic expectations, and you’ll have a blast.

Score: 7/10

(This game was reviewed using an Xbox 360 copy provided by Tecmo Koei.)

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Safer sorties: Fighter pilots get ‘X-ray vision’ with new Striker helmet

A new kind of helmet developed by UK-based defense contractor BAE Systems gives fighter pilots 'X-ray vision', enabling them to see outside the aircraft in every direction, including through its solid metal hull.

With anti-aircraft weaponry becoming ever more sophisticated, fighter pilots need all the help they can get to secure their safety, with split-second decisions making the difference between dinner back at base and a life-ending fireball.

To help better inform those life-and-death decisions, UK-based defense contractor BAE Systems has developed a new kind of helmet that allows pilots to see outside the aircraft in every direction, even through its solid metal hull.

The Striker helmet uses augmented reality technology to give pilots better-than-ever views of their surroundings.

Images displayed to the pilot via the special helmet are captured by cameras placed over the outside of the fighter plane. Three sensors located inside the cockpit work with a number of flashing LED lights located on the helmet to determine precisely where the pilot is looking, allowing the system to feed the appropriate images back to the pilot via the visor, in real time.

Explaining to the BBC how the helmet works, BAE’s Alan Jowett said, “If a pilot wears a Striker helmet – which is essentially a helmet with an integrated display – when he sees something on the ground he can just turn his head, put a symbol across on to the point of interest, press a button, and the system will calculate the object’s co-ordinates. The aircraft can then turn its sensors, cameras or weapons in that direction – so it allows a dialog directly between the plane and the pilot.”

The helmet-mounted displays (HMD) provide pilots with images unavailable on the traditional head-up displays (HUD), which only communicate limited data, such as altitude, speed and direction. HUDs also show targets, though for these the pilot needs to move the plane into position before a weapon can be fired.

HMDs made their debut in the 1990s, and are constantly being updated with the latest technology in an effort to keep one step ahead of the enemy.

According to the BBC, the new helmet is already being used by fighter pilots in a number of countries, but up to now only during training missions.

As you would expect, the Striker helmet was put through its paces before pilots started wearing it. The wind test, for example, looked at how the helmet deals with a sudden 600 knot wind blast after a pilot ejects from a plane. The video below gives more details on the new helmet, and takes a closer look at its rigorous testing procedures.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Faster than a speeding right cross: Hands-on with Injustice Gods Among Us

Even though Injustice: Gods Among Us comes to us from the developer that brought us Mortal Kombat, this DC character-based fighter has its own bag of tricks.

Fighting games all have a unique fingerprint. When a developer designs a fighting game, that game takes on the characteristics of the developer, regardless of what the content is. A perfect example of this can be seen with Capcom. A fan of Street Fighter can pick up any of the Capcom fighting games and feel comfortable with the controls. Those games all have a specific style and gameplay that is unique to them. So when NetherRealm Studios announced that it was making Injustice: Gods Among Us, a fighting game using a cast of characters from the DC Comics universe, it was an understandable assumption that the game would mimic the style of Mortal Kombat. But we were wrong.

Injustice does feel like Mortal Kombat in some ways, but it is also its own game. The move list is similar to that of Mortal Komabt, but beyond that, it acts and responds in a different way. One specific difference is the change in the way you block. The Mortal Kombat games are well known for using a block button. While that sounds innocuous enough, it changed the fighting mechanics and the way gamers approached the gameplay. Injustice does not have a block button, instead you hold back to block. The buttons are different as well, and rather than two punch and two kick, or strong and weak attacks, there are three attack buttons and a button that unleashes an attack specific to the character you are using. For a character like Flash, it will activate his powers, and the opponent will slow down to represent you moving at super speed, while Nightwing will combine his escrima sticks into a staff, which opens up a new moves set. Each character is different.  

Each character also has a special attack that is powered up during the fight. Once it is filled, pressing the trigger buttons together begins an incredibly powerful attack. Solomon Grundy takes knives and hatchets out of his back to slice his opponents in a cinematic, the Flash takes a running start around the world and hits his foe, Wonder Woman slashes her opponent with help from her Amazonian brethren. Each character has his or her own cinematic attack. It can be dodged, but it is difficult. It’s similar to the new Mortal Kombat x-ray attack, but less gory and more in line with comic books flair.

The levels will also have a bit of Mortal Kombat flair. They are all modeled on DC locations and will be steeped in lore. Of the two that have been announced, the Batcave and the Fortress of Solitude, both are filled with background items that fans will love. The Batcave will feature a computer running villain profiles, while the Fortress is chalk full of Superman history. Doomsday is clearly seen in the background, just feet from the bottled city of Kandor, and Superman’s zoo is also featured. All levels will also have multiple sections to them, and punching an opponent in the right spot can send them crashing through a wall – or the Phantom Zone as the case may be — to an new area. The levels will also feature environmental items that can be used as weapons. A hanging display, for example, can thrown at an enemy.

So far only nine characters have been revealed, but there will be over 20, and maybe even many more. The exact number has yet to be released, but the characters currently on display are: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Cyborg, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Solomon Grundy, and Nightwing (developer Ed Boon’s favorite character). The remaining fighters will be unveiled over the next few months, but there are some you can certainly expect like the Joker, Green Lantern, and more of the more familiar faces.

The characters will also fill certain roles. Superman is a heavy bruiser, slow and powerful, while Flash is a faster character that can make up for weaker attacks with quantity. All of the characters are also broken up into one of two groups, those with powers and those with gadgets. Superman and Wonder Woman are obviously power characters, while Batman and Catwoman are gadget characters, to name a few.

Now, if you are a fan of DC comics, you may wonder how Wonder Woman could go head to head with Harley Quinn and not pulverize her skull with a single punch. Longtime comic fans could probably make an argument that Batman could take Superman with careful planning, but it seems doubtful that it would make for a good 2D fighting game. NetherRealm Studios is promising that there will be a legitimate reason for this that will be part of the storyline.

There is one minor edition to the gameplay that could have a huge effect on the course of the fights. When you are forced into a corner, on each level there will be a button (or something similar that you can interact with) that you can press. When you do, it will unleash an environmental attack on your opponent. The level will dictate the attack – it could be missiles from the Batmobile or a boom tube that allows you to warp behind your opponent and hit them — but it will give people that find themselves under constant attack a way to get out.

Injustice: Gods Among Us is shaping up nicely. The game still has the distinctive feel of Mortal Kombat in some ways, but it is more like cousin than a clone. The fighter feel appropriately different from one another, and it will be interesting to see what other characters make the cut and end up in the game. NetherRealm and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment haven’t given a release date yet other than 2013, but fighting fans and DC comics fans alike should keep an eye out for this one.

 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Persona 4 Arena review

Can a hybrid of a fighter and an RPG succeed? Atlus and Arc System Works hope to find the answer in Persona 4 Arena.

As a big fan of Atlus’ Persona series of roleplaying games, I had my doubts about Persona 4 Arena. Developer Arc System Works has proven time and time again that it’s got the chops to create some of the finest 2D fighters in the world, yet with P4A the company was attempting to build a fighter in its own trademarked, hyper-kinectic style that also somehow retains the crucial elements fans loved about the Persona titles, that initially built the canon for the game. It’s hard to imagine two gaming genres as disparate as fighting games and epic Japanese-style roleplaying games, and yet I’m relieved to report that P4A is not just a great mashup of Persona and Arc System Works’ fighting game mechanics, it’s one of my favorite fighters of recent years.

Keep in mind that I did not say “one of the best new fighters of recent years.” We’ll get to why that’s important in just a moment.

If you’re unfamilar with Atlus’ Persona games, a quick primer: In short, the Persona franchise is a modern Japanese-style roleplaying series that tasks players both with battling demons and with surviving the rigors of a Japanese high school. The vast majority of the game’s key characters are high school-aged teens (with all the drama, sarcasm and hormones that implies) with the ability to summon and control the titular Personas. Think of Personas as aspects of one’s personality that manifest as giant, supernatural creatures and grant their users all kinds of useful magical abilities. In Atlus’ Persona RPGs the characters used these Personas to battle shadows throughout the many floors of a giant otherworldly tower that replaced their high school every night.

Notice how complicated that backstory gets? Yeah, and that’s massively condensed. That must have presented a pretty massive hurdle for Arc System Works to overcome in creating a fighter based around this mythology. Traditionally, fighting games have had little to no story — they only needed enough to justify the virtual fisticuffs  — so how would they have to change to incorporate a massive, pre-existing storyline?

The answer, at least according to Persona 4 Arena, is that every aspect of the fighting game has to be infused with backstory. Take the game’s Story Mode for instance: It differs for each fighter, and offers two to three hours of playtime for each, but the majority of one’s time in this mode will be spent reading screens of scrolling text. Occasionally you’ll find yourself drawn into a fight, but with these battles ending in a matter of minutes, the Mode is pretty much entirely dedicated to telling a story. While that may offend those who bought Persona 4 Arena as a fighting game, it’s great news for fans of Atlus’ Persona RPGs. The story written for Persona 4 Arena is on par with its roleplaying forebears, and the characters are somehow fleshed out to an even greater extent than they were in their original games. There’s a good reason why Atlus has officially stated that the events of Persona 4 Arena are canonical in the Persona universe, and that that they fit in so very well. 

Of course, those who were hoping for a simple fighting game could just play through the Arcade Mode, which is a Street Fighter-esque string of battles leading up to a fight with the game’s boss. While this is more traditional, it is also infused with story. Characters chat about the plot between rounds, the announcer offers canon-appropriate commentary and the ending is surprisingly lengthy and involved. The online multiplayer and versus modes are more or less standard fighting game fare, but in the end Persona 4 Arena is the most story-rich fighting game ever created. Whether that pleases you or completely turns you off to the project is a personal choice, but given that Atlus and Arc System Works wanted to a create a fighter that would have crossover appeal to RPG gamers, it makes a lot of sense — and it’s impressive that Atlus and Arc System Works were so successful.

I realize that until now I’ve focused pretty heavily on how much storytelling this game does, but underneath all of that is a very functional, interesting fighting game engine. Though characters feel a bit slower than those found in Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear series, they’re still very agile, and “hyper-kinetic” is a good description for the combat. Remember the Personas I mentioned earlier? They accompany characters into battle and functionally serve to power the more spectacular attacks the game has to offer. Unfortunately, while your Persona is throwing a hurricane at your opponent, it is standing out on the battlefield, vulnerable to attack. If your foe is able to hit your Persona enough it will cause a Persona Break which disables all of your Persona-powered attacks for a short period of time. Since Persona-based attacks are your character’s most powerful attacks, you can see how this might limit a person’s options during battle.

Though the Persona Break system is a very interesting quirk, it represents the combat’s only real break from traditional 2D fighting genre tropes. The controls in Persona 4 Arena are a relatively simple riff on the classic Capcom formula, special moves, super moves and all the other flashy attacks we’ve come to know and love are represented here, and you get about eight fights before squaring off against an over-powered boss. Hopefully I haven’t made this sound like it’s a bad thing, because I think that this level of familiarity makes sure that fans of other fighters can quickly acclimate to the Persona 4 Arena system. Likewise, it allows those gamers who bought this thing purely on the strength of the Persona brand name a chance to pick up the basics of how to punch and kick in relatively quick fashion. While it’s not yet known how well the fighting game community will adopt Persona 4 Arena, they seem pretty keen on it so until further notice you can view the fighting game system in this game as pretty solid and robust.

Conclusion

As I said above though, I wouldn’t quite place Persona 4 Arena as the best fighter of recent years. Instead, it’s the fighter that I’ve enjoyed the most over the past decade. Why? To put it simply, I’m a huge Persona fan. I love these characters and any chance to experience stories of their further adventures, even if they aren’t in RPG format, is something I just can’t argue with. While I would recommend the game to fighting game fans, I would first and foremost recommend it to those who enjoy fighters but also love the Persona RPG games. This is as close to a Persona 5 as we’re going to be getting any time soon, and I’m happy to report that it’s a very viable substitute while we wait.

Score: 9 out of 10

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com