PixlBit

Horrible… so, so horrible, it pains me to even think about it. Oh, no, not Dead or Alive 5, just the horrendous story mode that you're required to complete to unlock all of the characters in the game. Trust me; I totally understand the value of having some goals to work towards, especially goals that have some associated pay-off. Costumes would have been more than sufficient; however, I was forcibly pushed through the over-the-top, ridiculous, and repetitive story mode of Dead or Alive 5 before I could really appreciate the meat of the experience. Thankfully what's tucked away is quite good - a noticeable improvement to the complexity of the core fighting system.

What's always distinguished the Dead or Alive series from its peers is the ease in which an amateur can hop into the game and feel empowered, performing well almost immediately. On the other end of the spectrum, the hardcore fighting crowd was able to focus on the block and reversal system and master the moves and unique fighting styles of each character. Unfortunately for hardcore fighting gamers, Dead or Alive has never been about heavy combos or complex button inputs, so it's never found the same market that Tekken or Virtua Fighter has, but it's carved out its own segment of the market and provided well to it for years now.

Dead or Alive 5 steps up the series and provides some facilities that the hardcore has been demanding for years, namely, movement in three dimensions. This means that every single move found in past iterations has been retrofit into this new engine. Some moves can connect despite the differing plane of your enemy, while others will miss. This small change adds an entire degree of complexity to the fighter that the hardcore can appreciate. It ups the ante for the strategies that must be learned to fight competitively in this game.

Perhaps more important, Team Ninja has addressed a variety of other issues with the game in regards to holds and their unbalanced degree of power. While still powerful, the move has been nerfed and is much harder to execute than in the past. As such, players can no longer lean on throws as a crutch to turn the tide of the match, but must instead execute a planned strategy and a mastery of either the block/reversal system or a cancelling move.

One of the nicest new additions found this time around is the advanced Training Mode. All of the secrets of the fighting system are now laid bare in this mode, indicating what moves are cancels, the amount of damage they do, and their other various effects in given circumstances. This tool will allow anyone, even veterans, to improve their skills with any given character in the game.

And what a set of characters there are. This time around we see a full roster of characters from past games, plus a couple new ones, and even a few guest characters from the Virtua Fighter series. Interestingly, the guest characters play fairly close to their original incarnations, which struck me as an invitation to the hardcore to at least give the game a shot.

What will likely be the greatest problem for the competitive crowd is the somewhat spotty online play. Not every match is smooth, which makes it tougher to recommend for fighting game enthusiasts, but for the more casual player, it’s consistent enough that the small hiccups won’t be a deal breaker. Team Ninja is still supporting the game with patches, so it may be that over time these problems will disappear.

As a fan of the series, I’ve enjoyed the improvements featured here, but it’s disheartening to see the best features of the experience tucked away behind the oppressive story mode. Sure, there’s no requirement that you go through it first, but because it unlocks a number of characters in the roster, you basically have to in order to access the entire contents of the game. Combined with the somewhat unreliable online play, Dead or Alive 5 loses a bit of credit, but overall it’s easily the best entry in the series to date.