Dead or Alive

"Good but not the king"

just bought this game off of ebay because I really enjoy playing the sequel and I remember having a good impression of the Playstation version. The biggest reason that I bought it though(other than the fact that it was too inexpensive to pass up), was because after years of hype I wanted to see what it looked like in motion. It came out the same time as the last decent domestically released 3-D fighter did (Last Bronx.) From all accounts, Saturn DOA was supposed to stomp all over that title, and more importantly, Virtua Fighter 2 from a great height. So does it?

Well...hmmm...NO! Not saying that it's not an impressive game. As far as gameplay goes it is structured very much like VF2. There is no voluntary lateral movement. Only three buttons are used. You have a punch and a kick, but instead of a block button you have a hold button. This allows you to grapple with your opponent. It makes for a very different kind of game, which at the masters level is probably cheap and defensive. However at the novice level it is great fun and a round moves at a decent pace.
The gameplay is in the short term more fun than Sega's games, but not quite as deep or interesting. The characters playing styles are not quite as individually fleshed out and there are no ground attacks. The control, however, is just as tight as VF2. In addition you don't have to deal with that horrible floating jump from VF2. DOA also has danger zones surrounding the rings. You can fight in the danger zones, but if you are knocked down in them you will take extra damage. DOA also has a Tekken style in game moves list, which is helpful. There are a few modes of play. You have a survival mode( if you don't know what this is then play more videogames.) You have a kumite mode, in which you do battle in a set number of fights in order to try to unlock hidden goodies. Then there are the usual suspects(arcade, watch, time attack, training.) None of them compare to the innovation of VF2's learning mode.

As far as the audio/visual presentation. The opening movie is very slick. It's not Tekken slick, but it is pretty. The menus are all very functional. The music is not special or memorable, but it's not irritating. The music has that 90's Sega arcade sound. The voices are of high quality, the hit sounds don't have enough bass though. They rarely do in these games.

Now we come to what is, for the purposes of this review, the most important part. Are the graphics better than VF2 or LB (I thought that Fighters Megamix was pretty ugly, so I'm not including that one.) Yes and no, the characters in DOA are probably the smoothest polygonal characters ever seen on the Saturn. They exhibit little to no clipping, which cannot be said for the characters in either VF2 or LB. I think there may even be some texture enveloping (skinning), a technique that I don't think I've ever seen used in any other Saturn game. Plus you have the infamous bouncing breasts, which look kind of goofy, but regardless of that goofiness are impressive. The character also have head tracking and Moving face textures (although this quality is not as sharply defined as it should be.) The textures are without question the best that the Saturn can do. They are high resolution and super clean. Unlike VF2 there are no simulated ground shadows, only large grey circles under the fighters. I guess the shadow budget was used for the breasts.

The backgrounds look very much like VF2's backgrounds, but with the addition of the danger zones and the accompanying polygonal explosion effect. This effect is odd looking and could benefit from some dramatic lighting (as is in the Playstation version.) They don't have anywhere near the level of VDP2 trickery that the Last Bronx backgrounds exhibit though.

When all is said and done DOA in some respects it is one of the prettiest games on the system and it's A LOT of fun. Overall it doesn't unseat VF2 as the king though.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/30/03, Updated 03/05/07