Dead or Alive 3
Added June 8th, 2005 by LibThorne
Introduction:
Dead Or Alive 3 is a stunning technical achievement. Even in 2005, years after the game was first introduced, it boasts some of the best graphics on the Xbox. The backgrounds are vibrant with color, and the destructibility and interarctiveness of the environments almost harkens to the seminal Power Stone. The question is, is there more to Dead Or Alive 3 than the beautiful visuals, or is it merely a simple button-masher?
Gameplay:
Ah, gameplay. The meat of any fighting game, and the true test of any fighter’s longetivity. The legendary Street Fighter II had such great gameplay that tournaments are still held to this day, fifteen years after the US launch of Street Fighter II: The World Warriors.
Dead Or Alive 3 is a stunning technical achievement. Even in 2005, years after the game was first introduced, it boasts some of the best graphics on the Xbox. The backgrounds are vibrant with color, and the destructibility and interarctiveness of the environments almost harkens to the seminal Power Stone. The question is, is there more to Dead Or Alive 3 than the beautiful visuals, or is it merely a simple button-masher?
Gameplay:
Ah, gameplay. The meat of any fighting game, and the true test of any fighter’s longetivity. The legendary Street Fighter II had such great gameplay that tournaments are still held to this day, fifteen years after the US launch of Street Fighter II: The World Warriors.
Dead Or Alive 3 is not Street Fighter II. Obvious, I know, but I mean that, as far as gameply goes, DOA3 is severely lacking. There are three basic moves; strikes, throws, and counters. Each move is used with weaknesses to others, forming a sort of rock/paper/scissors kind of game, only with punches and kicks. Strikes are beaten by counters who are beaten by throws who are beaten by strikes, so higher-level gameplay essentially breaks down into guessing correctly. This also makes characters who are good at counters and throws terribly dominant, such as Bass.
The roster is another fairly significant letdown. Compared to other fighters, Dead Or Alive 3 has a terribly small cast. Sixteen fighters (with an unlockable seventeenth, Ein from Dead Or Alive 2) does sound impressive, until you hit the details. There are four characters Hayate, Ryu Hayabusa, Kasumi, Ayane) who all practice the ninjutsu style. While Ayane and Kasumi are fairly different, Hayate and Hayabusa have very few true differences in style. Even worse are the characters that specialize in Russian Martial Arts, Leon and Bayman, who have almost the exact same movelist. In this reviewer’s opinion, this shows a lot of laziness on Team Ninja’s part, by not including more styles and having too many similar styles. Personally, seeing some Capoeira or Judo would be a nice inclusion.
However, it’s not all bad. Characters like Jann Lee and Gen Fu are interesting takes on characters, a refreshing gasp of air in the ninja-heavy cast. Grapplers, like Leon, Bayman, Bass, and Tina do a lot of damage, though their capacity of rlong combo chains isn’t close to that of the other characters. Newcomer to the cast Brad Wong, an expert in drunken boxing, brings an interesting element to the cast, by being a striker character who is difficult to counter due to the craziness of his style. I haven’t had as much fun playing a drunken boxer since Shun Di in Virtua Fighter 2. Brad’s moves and combos flow like water, and his play is just very smooth in general. Gen Fu is almost the antithesis of Brad. Gen’s moves are slow, and do not flow together like Brad’s, but each move packs a lot of power behind it, and his counters and throws are devastating. Hitomi, a female karate expert, fills the void left by Ein from Dead Or Alive 2 (at least until Ein himself is unlocked). She combines powerful strikes with devastating counters, making her a unique and fun to play character. Ein stands as a counterpoint to Hitomi, relying more on punishing strikes to do damage. To Team Ninja’s credit, no one character is overpowered or underpowered for beginning play, something most other 3D fighters can’t say.
Dead Or Alive 3 offers a great mix of game types. There’s your standard Story Mode, Survival, and Team Battle. On to this, Team Ninja throws Tag Battle, which works very similarly to the Tekken Tag Tournament style, though unlike Tekken Tag every character combination has team attacks. My personal favorite is a Gen Fu/Jann Lee combo that has Fu twirl the opponent around before Lee smashes him with his foot. There’s also versus mode, and Tag Battle can be played co-operatively or competitively, a refreshing move for a fighting game.
The Dead Or Alive 3 AI is very well done, providing a lot of challenge even on Normal difficulty. However, it does tend to get cheap near the end of both story and tag battle. Kasumi and Ayane, in particular, are very annoying to fight, especially on higher difficulties. Unfortunately, Dead Or Alive 3 has one of the worst boss battles I’ve ever seen. The camera position is changed radically (from the typical side to a sort of low 3rd person view), and the boss completely breaks the mold of the game. Every time you knock the boss down, you take damage, and the boss throws out tons of projectiles. I expect projectiles in a 2D fighter where I can respond in kind, but throwing it in a 3D fighter where no character but the boss can reply at range smacks of bad design. On top of that, once you close in, the boss is a pushover. Defeating him is hardly a challenge, especially if you manage to start a long juggle (air combo, for the uninitiated), the boss just crumbles. It’s a really, really unfulfilling end to an otherwise well-done story mode, made all the more disappointing because the fight before the boss is usually a pretty good challenge and is, in fact, quite entertaining.
Graphics:
There’s no question about it. Dead Or Alive 3 remains one of the best looking games of this generation. The colors are vibrant, the textures clear and crisp, the characters have insane amounts of detail, and the levels themselves are imbued with a sense of life. There’s something wonderful about kicking up leaves in a dry forest, seeing knocked down candle stands visibly affect the stage’s lighting, not to mention seeing the different reflections in polished floors and icy caverns. The water effects are spot on, as are the snow effects. The lighting in general is excellent. It really is the animation that blows me away. Brad Wong’s combos, Jann Lee’s idle animation (where he dances around the opponent), they imbue each character with a sense of personality. Even the minute differences in similar moves make a world of difference. For instance, Bass and Tina, the two wrestler characters, are very different. Bass’s moves are slower and more damaging, and the animations really bring that home. Tina’s, on the other hand, are much flashier. Both of these go to show a lot of personality between the two. It really is a stunning use of animation, using it to give each character a distinct personality between huge muscles and, ahem, huge bosoms. It’s a technique used all the time for 2D fighters and it is nice to see it make the jump to 3D.
The roster is another fairly significant letdown. Compared to other fighters, Dead Or Alive 3 has a terribly small cast. Sixteen fighters (with an unlockable seventeenth, Ein from Dead Or Alive 2) does sound impressive, until you hit the details. There are four characters Hayate, Ryu Hayabusa, Kasumi, Ayane) who all practice the ninjutsu style. While Ayane and Kasumi are fairly different, Hayate and Hayabusa have very few true differences in style. Even worse are the characters that specialize in Russian Martial Arts, Leon and Bayman, who have almost the exact same movelist. In this reviewer’s opinion, this shows a lot of laziness on Team Ninja’s part, by not including more styles and having too many similar styles. Personally, seeing some Capoeira or Judo would be a nice inclusion.
However, it’s not all bad. Characters like Jann Lee and Gen Fu are interesting takes on characters, a refreshing gasp of air in the ninja-heavy cast. Grapplers, like Leon, Bayman, Bass, and Tina do a lot of damage, though their capacity of rlong combo chains isn’t close to that of the other characters. Newcomer to the cast Brad Wong, an expert in drunken boxing, brings an interesting element to the cast, by being a striker character who is difficult to counter due to the craziness of his style. I haven’t had as much fun playing a drunken boxer since Shun Di in Virtua Fighter 2. Brad’s moves and combos flow like water, and his play is just very smooth in general. Gen Fu is almost the antithesis of Brad. Gen’s moves are slow, and do not flow together like Brad’s, but each move packs a lot of power behind it, and his counters and throws are devastating. Hitomi, a female karate expert, fills the void left by Ein from Dead Or Alive 2 (at least until Ein himself is unlocked). She combines powerful strikes with devastating counters, making her a unique and fun to play character. Ein stands as a counterpoint to Hitomi, relying more on punishing strikes to do damage. To Team Ninja’s credit, no one character is overpowered or underpowered for beginning play, something most other 3D fighters can’t say.
Dead Or Alive 3 offers a great mix of game types. There’s your standard Story Mode, Survival, and Team Battle. On to this, Team Ninja throws Tag Battle, which works very similarly to the Tekken Tag Tournament style, though unlike Tekken Tag every character combination has team attacks. My personal favorite is a Gen Fu/Jann Lee combo that has Fu twirl the opponent around before Lee smashes him with his foot. There’s also versus mode, and Tag Battle can be played co-operatively or competitively, a refreshing move for a fighting game.
The Dead Or Alive 3 AI is very well done, providing a lot of challenge even on Normal difficulty. However, it does tend to get cheap near the end of both story and tag battle. Kasumi and Ayane, in particular, are very annoying to fight, especially on higher difficulties. Unfortunately, Dead Or Alive 3 has one of the worst boss battles I’ve ever seen. The camera position is changed radically (from the typical side to a sort of low 3rd person view), and the boss completely breaks the mold of the game. Every time you knock the boss down, you take damage, and the boss throws out tons of projectiles. I expect projectiles in a 2D fighter where I can respond in kind, but throwing it in a 3D fighter where no character but the boss can reply at range smacks of bad design. On top of that, once you close in, the boss is a pushover. Defeating him is hardly a challenge, especially if you manage to start a long juggle (air combo, for the uninitiated), the boss just crumbles. It’s a really, really unfulfilling end to an otherwise well-done story mode, made all the more disappointing because the fight before the boss is usually a pretty good challenge and is, in fact, quite entertaining.
Graphics:
There’s no question about it. Dead Or Alive 3 remains one of the best looking games of this generation. The colors are vibrant, the textures clear and crisp, the characters have insane amounts of detail, and the levels themselves are imbued with a sense of life. There’s something wonderful about kicking up leaves in a dry forest, seeing knocked down candle stands visibly affect the stage’s lighting, not to mention seeing the different reflections in polished floors and icy caverns. The water effects are spot on, as are the snow effects. The lighting in general is excellent. It really is the animation that blows me away. Brad Wong’s combos, Jann Lee’s idle animation (where he dances around the opponent), they imbue each character with a sense of personality. Even the minute differences in similar moves make a world of difference. For instance, Bass and Tina, the two wrestler characters, are very different. Bass’s moves are slower and more damaging, and the animations really bring that home. Tina’s, on the other hand, are much flashier. Both of these go to show a lot of personality between the two. It really is a stunning use of animation, using it to give each character a distinct personality between huge muscles and, ahem, huge bosoms. It’s a technique used all the time for 2D fighters and it is nice to see it make the jump to 3D.
The in game graphics are so good, so well-animated that they put the end-game CG to shame. The CG looks really stilted and primitive, and the characters lose a lot of expression due to the overly stiff animation. It astounds me, to this day, that here is a game where the in-game graphics completely and utterly demolish the CG. Really, the only thing this reviewer found fault in was clipping problems during some attacks, but the overall quality of the graphics is simply second to none.
Audio:
Dead or Alive 3 misses a beat with it sound. The voices sound good, though it is weird to have characters with American origins speaking fluent Japanese, but one can’t really fault Team Ninja for that, as it’s a problem with most games. The music is excellent, running the gamut from heartfelt ballads to techno to industrial rock and heavy metal. Unfortunately, the hitting noises sound very off, at least to this reviewer. Hits are loud or crushingly loud, even a simple punch results in a meaty thwack kind of sound, and that just sounds weird. More variation in the noises of the various punches, kicks, jabs, and thrusts would have been welcome, and it seems odd that in a game with such stellar production values that such a key sound is overdone.
Controls:
DOA3 controls pretty much flawlessly on the Controller S. In fact, one of DOA3’s greatest strengths is its use of the Xbox controller, and it handles better than the many other fighters on the system. There’s no input lag, and the simple directional inputs are much easier to perform than the more complicated fighter motions such as the famous quarter-circle forward. There does seem to be some oddities with the timing for counter moves, but other than that, DOA3’s controls are rock solid.
Replay:
Replay is unfortunately not one of Dead Or Alive 3’s strong points. The single player only satisfies for so long, and while it does have the standard fighting game modes and a tag battle on top of that., there’s not terribly much to do. The small cast size goes a long way towards limiting the amount of fun to be had. There is also the intrinsic flaw of fighting games, if you don’t have people to play with, they aren’t a lot of fun. Without Xbox Live support (understandable, since DOA3 is a launch title after all), and no friends who like to play the game as well, there’s not a lot you can do with Dead or Alive 3, besides admire those pretty graphics.
Summary:
Dead Or Alive 3 has a lot of faults, and it gets a lot of things right. The game is, most importantly, very fun to play. It is simple enough to pick up for most gamers, however, in the years since DOA3’s release, a game breaking combo with Hayabusa has all but killed high-level play for Dead Or Alive 3. This is a great game to have for people who want to get friends interested in fighting games, and is a fun party game in its own right. In fact, one could say that it’s an ideal time killer for gamers who don’t typically play fighting games. However, the lack of any real depth to the game between what is essentially rock, paper, scissors with fists and feet means you won’t see this game played much once Dead Or Alive 4 hits.
Dead Or Alive 3 has a lot of faults, and it gets a lot of things right. The game is, most importantly, very fun to play. It is simple enough to pick up for most gamers, however, in the years since DOA3’s release, a game breaking combo with Hayabusa has all but killed high-level play for Dead Or Alive 3. This is a great game to have for people who want to get friends interested in fighting games, and is a fun party game in its own right. In fact, one could say that it’s an ideal time killer for gamers who don’t typically play fighting games. However, the lack of any real depth to the game between what is essentially rock, paper, scissors with fists and feet means you won’t see this game played much once Dead Or Alive 4 hits.
