Dead or Alive 3

"Incredible game play, brought down only by a lack of plot"

Introduction: Dead or Alive 3 is an arcade-style fighting game. Obviously the third in a series, you don't have to have played the previous two to have a good experience. And, no, this is not the volleyball game. Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball was based off this, in that they have the same characters, but the two are in no other way similar. This is a fighting game, not volleyball.

Gameplay: 9/10 The gameplay here is great. Each character has about eighty moves they can perform (with some have a little over sixty, others with 110), and each character is given their own style of martial arts. I can't say I know for sure whether their Karate or Tai Chi Quan is accurate, but it doesn't matter all that much. You get the general feel, and this little detail adds a lot to the game.

The controls are fairly simple to learn. If you've played Soul Calibur II, you should notice that the moves are much easier in DOA3. You can think this as good or bad. Personally, I think it's good. The downside to the controls is that just about any combination of a direction and any other button will form a combo, meaning this can easily turn into a button masher, and it's never really a good thing when you can win by just smashing the buttons and performing completely random moves.

One of the systems I loved about this game was the counter moves. Just about any attack can be countered. If someone punches your face, you can grab their hand and throw them to the floor. I'll admit this isn't a new feature in games, but it was implemented very well.

One of the big downfalls to DOA3 is Omega, the boss. This is an arcade fighter, so it is possible to get to the boss within the first five minutes of gameplay, which means you'll be facing Omega a lot. But you face all the other characters a lot, don't you? Yeah, but the other characters aren't the cheapest players in all of video gaming. Omega is utterly cheap. He's not special in any way, as in, he's not an excellent fighter, he's not really fast, or anything like that. He's just cheap. He carries a weapon, time is slowed down when fighting him, he has several long range attacks that he can use one after another so you never get within ten feet of of him, and if you knock him over, you have to jump before a shockwave knocks down and damages you.

There are two main features/game modes that I liked a lot in DOA3. The first one is exercise mode. This is a sub-mode, that you can go into while in Sparring (practice) mode. Basically, you go against another player (who doesn't move unless he needs to crouch, or turn backwards, or whatnot) and your task is to complete every one of your character's moves. The game goes through them one by one, and after you successfully complete the given move, you move on to the next one. It's a great feature, and although it could have been improved slightly, what it lacks does not bring it down at all that much.

The second feature is Tag Team. This is, obviously, a tag team battle. You and your friend can be on the same team and battle it out against two other players. If you get injured two much, you can tag out and your partner comes in. While they fight, the two other players recharge their health. It's a very fun feature, improved even by the fact that there are a couple more moves you can do. These involve both players working together to perform a combo. You can only perform these moves when between the period where one player is leaving the arena (after being tagged out), and the other player is entering.

Story: 2/10 There's a story here? Maybe you'll actually see a story if you've played the previous DOA games. I didn't play those, and what I saw was the weakest attempt at a plot ever. ''Story Mode'' consists of of like eight fights and two cinematics. The first cinematic attempts to pit you against another player, kind of like the ''Destined Battles'' of Soul Calibur II. The second cinematic is the ending. The end is thirty seconds to a minute long, and the first cinematic is about ten seconds long. Basically what this means is you get an ending that's almost a complete mystery in how it fits in with anything else.

I guess it's good that they at least had cinematics. That was my main problem with Soul Calibur II, it only had one ten second cinematic for the Destined Battle. But SCII did have a fairly decent plot. It didn't have to be explained so much because all the characters were looking for the same thing, a special sword. In DOA3, you don't know what in the world the characters are doing fighting each other. Does it follow the Metal Gear Solid 2: SOL quote ''You seem to get a real thrill out of slaughtering the enemy. Are you frustrated about something?'' It's one of the big mysteries: why are they fighting each other?

Graphics: 10/10 Yeah, this game has incredible graphics. Great 3-D backdrops for great-looking stages. The characters look great, too. Think about it this way: nobody's going to make a volleyball game based on bad-looking characters, or at least do that and have it be at all successful. You'll have no problem with the graphics, except for maybe some annoying things, like a stage where every time somebody's knocked against a wall, an electrical generator or something explodes in a giant bright-purple flash. It looks good, but it's annoying.

Sound: 7/10 The sound, as a whole, is really good. Nothing incredibly surprising or utterly stupid. The thing that gets me, though, is what the characters say. Not so much what they say, but how they say it. I wasn't sure what category this would fit best under, but one of the things that really got to me was the fact that every time a character says something, they speak one to two syllables in some (I think) made up language, that translates to be anywhere from two to six words. Try saying any six words with only one syllable. I really think they should have just taken a few people off the street and told them to do the voice acting in English. It would have been infinitely better. Even an Asian language would work better. I'm not an expert on languages, but I can't believe that in any language you would be able to say much with so few words. You know, it's not that big of a deal, but it's just one of those little things that can really get to you.

Play Time/Replayability: You'll get at least decent play time out of DOA3. It has a good amount of characters to choose from, and a few different game modes. I have to say, though, that you won't get as much time as you would out of Soul Calibur II. Comparing the amount and length of the game modes from both games, it's obvious that DOA3 is no match for SCII. Soul Calibur has two different plots, a general plot for all the characters that can take many hours to complete, and an arcade-style story, which takes a few minutes for each character. Of these, only the latter is present in DOA3.

You won't get a huge amount of playtime out of it, but I'd say you'll at least get your money's worth.

Final Recommendation: Buy! All in all, Dead or Alive 3 is an incredible game. Great graphics and great gameplay help to make up for the lack of plot. If you're a fan of the the other games, or of fighting games in general, this is a must-have. If you're not into fighting games, you may want to consider renting it, at the least. It deserves a chance.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/03