Dead or Alive

"High 5, more dead than alive."

Tecmo’s Dead or Alive is yet another triumph of style over substance. This fighter features sumptuous graphics, a fighting system with little of the usual fighting game frills (borrowed from Sega’s Virtua Fighter games), and hot babes. Yes, the last item on that list is this game’s obvious selling point, with the three leading ladies splashed on the cover and in the background of every other page of the manual. Game companies learned early on with Chun-Li in the early Street Fighter games that guys (specifically, teenage guys) enjoy seeing and controlling beautiful women who can beat the crap out of people. I suppose I can’t fault Tecmo for playing this up to the hilt in DoA, but I wish they had done a better job with the other aspects of the game. Um, but are there other aspects of the game?

Dead or Alive’s setup is nothing new: a bunch of fighters get together for some tournament to knock each other’s teeth out. That’s the extent of the story for DoA. The lack of an introductory story is further compounded by the fact that the game has no endings for the individual characters in Tournament mode. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too critical of the lack of narrative for any fighter, but that sort of thing does help make a game’s characters interesting beyond just their special moves. There are some non-female characters in this game, believe it or not, and they’re a pretty generic, forgettable bunch: the wrestler, the old Chinese guy, the token black guy, the military guy, etc. This has all been done before and done better. But there are those babes, right?

OK, so character design isn’t this game’s strength. The fighting system is something different for Playstation gamers, though. DoA claims to be fighting game for purists, abandoning things such as Capcom fireballs or weapons and relying solely on Strikes, Throws, and Holds. This system works in a Rock-Paper-Scissors fashion where Strikes beat Throws, Throws beat Holds, you get the picture. This all sounds like a great plan for a strategic, thoughtful fighter, but the game has less than stellar control as well as a serious case of the juggles. I really don’t have a problem with hitting someone when he’s down (not in real life of course), but you can get a ridiculous number of hits while an opponent is falling down or bouncing off the ground. This is especially true when you’re in the “Danger Zone” surrounding the fighting area, an interesting addition that causes a knocked-down fighter to bounce up in the air (complete with explosion) at a perfect level for some cheap juggles. Five or six hits after a knockdown just drives me nuts.

The Danger Zone can be turned off or even expanded once you earn the privilege to decide on that. As with most fighters released in the last few years, secrets and cheats are earned with either the passage of time or accomplishing certain tasks. The most marketable secrets (a paradox I know) are the character costumes. As you might expect, this is something that is more closely associated with the female characters--they even have three times as many outfits per character than the men, although some of the guys have a few interesting outfits (Zack’s “super hero” getup that makes him look like a Teletubby; Bayman’s scuba gear). Quite frankly, I felt kind of ridiculous sitting there playing the game trying to unlock these costume changes. Did I really need to sit there and mash the buttons so I could see Kasumi dressed in a pink bunny costume?

These costumes wouldn’t be worth a hoot if the graphics weren’t as good as they are--they’re easily the best thing in the game. The characters look fantastic, rivaling the looks of the Tekken 3 gang, and all the animation is very fluid and realistic. I was hard pressed to find many instances of polygon tearing or any of the other graphical glitches associated with 3D gaming. In contrast, the backgrounds are strictly 2D--flat and pretty bland, but that’s no big deal. Many of the holds in the game are cool to look at, but that doesn’t balance out with how frustrating some of them are to pull off. One thing I really like in DoA is the Training mode, where you have the option to go through a list of moves for your character, and the computer will tell you if you’ve pulled them off correctly. It’s also a good thing that you can skip a move that you find completely impossible to execute (and that will happen, believe me).

Dead or Alive sports some strikingly average music to go along with its generic fighting locations. None of it is absolutely terrible, nor is any of it very memorable; much of it falls in the category of “80s American wuss rock” (I’m fairly certain there is such a genre) with a few more Japanese sounding tunes thrown in for good measure. The sound effects are pretty good, complete with the usual thumps, grunts and smacks of fist on face that every fighting game needs. Plus, some holds are accompanied by some nice bone crackling sounds that accurately convey “Ouch.” One area I wasn’t too crazy about was the voice acting, especially that for the female fighters. Tecmo chose to stick with the original Japanese voicings, so I didn’t know what the heck these guys and gals were saying most of the time. I probably don’t want to know anyway; besides, it’s more fun to imagine what they’re saying.

I should mention that DoA has several modes other than the typical Tournament and Versus ones. Survival (win as many as you can before you lose), Time Trial, and the aforementioned Training options are available. There’s also something different called Kumite, where you select a character and a number of fights to participate in; you then fight random opponents, accumulating a record of wins-losses that determines your score. This mode can take a while, as the number of matches is either 30, 50, or 100. They should have called this mode Torture. Only sadists need apply here.

I wanted to like this game, but it really left me feeling disappointed. Dead or Alive could have been a great game with some tighter control and better designed characters, but I guess I’m not surprised that a game that features the option of turning on/off “Bouncing Breasts” turns out to be a fairly shallow experience. DoA focuses too much on T&A, and it ends up being a fighter that falls squarely in the middle of the pack. A rental at best.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/00, Updated 08/28/00