Dead or Alive 3

"It more Dead Or Alive 2.5 than 3, but it's a very fun fighter."

A fast paced fighter, that is Dead Or Alive main point. Like the 2nd game did on the Dreamcast and PS2, so does the sequel on the X Box. The sequel is better looking, but except that, it's much the same ol' fighter with the same gameplay, on the other hand, it's not a bad thing at all.

Each character has their own type of moves and fighting style. Kasumi for example is skilled on Ninjitsu and Hitomi is a Karate master. Each character can block, punch or kick, much like Virtua Fighter, but the game runs quicker than Virtua Fighter ever moved, making it action like fighter, the opposite from Virtua Fighter. Also the addition to Dead Or Alive is the counter, or holds. Holds are much like a combine of block and throw, you block the attack and counter it with a throw. So Dead or Alive 3 focuses on a fast moves like 4 times punch, and throw holds. Although it takes time learning how to counter, but than the game turns into a big fun.

Like its prequele, Dead or Alive 3 has Story, Survival, Versus, Team, Time Attack, Tag and Sparring modes. Story mode is bulid with 7 battles. You win them all and you beat the Story mode and win the FMV movie with the character you played. The main goal is to beat with every character's Story Mode and get all 16 movies. Survival Mode places in an arena and you try to survive as many fighters as you can, like any other ''fighter''. How ever, in the Dead Or Alive series you need to collect items and if you get them all you get a prize, but you must play all the characters to do that. Versus is 1 on 1 battles, either single or tag. Team is also either single or 2-player mode. You choose 1-5 fighters and the winner is the one who beat all the other players' fighters. Time Attack is how many time takes to beat 8 fighters, much like the Story mode only for time. Tag is 2 fighters vs 2 fighters. It starts as 1 on 1 battle and you can change between the characters in the middle on the battle. Sparring is training mode, you can either free practice of practice your moves.

With all the same things in the game, the new things are just the 4 new characters: Hitomi, the karate master, Christie the assassin, Brad Wong, the master at the drunken fist art and Hayate, which is Ein only with his memory back, And instead of Karate he's a Master in Ninjistsu.

The control is pretty hard to get along because there's the X box controller is too big for the game sometimes and the D-Pad isn't so comfortable sometimes, but you can always enable moving with the Analog which makes the game easier to control.

The graphics are amazing! This is the main difference between this and the last game. The game is so realistic with it's backgrounds and characters. Another plus side, the stages really are quite expansive, although it'll be nice playing tag games in the other 5 small stages. Also the background is interactive which means that you can use the background as you wish, you can either knock other players from the arena, shock them, or throw them on walls. And also you can see quite amazing thing like you can do marks on the snow or break neo lights, and it just beautiful to look at it. Not mention that in this game you'll hardly notice any slowdown and this is obviously the best looking game today.

Another good aspects of this game is the music. Some people find Dead Or Alive music annoying but it have some good tunes. This music is actually really good, and there are so many tracks it's a shame more stages/cut scenes couldn't be included to give them all a chance to shine, and also Aerosmith have good tunes in the game too. The sound effects are good although you can hear your character walk. The voice acting is better in Japanese so those voices are better.

Overall Dead Or Alive 3 isn't different than the last game. But it looks perfect. Even with the custom melee, you can play this game again and again. And it's one of the best games on the X-box. And don't forget the beautiful girls!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/17/03, Updated 03/17/03