It’s hard to imagine that Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive series turned fifteen this year since there are only four true installments of the series, with the last one releasing over six years ago during the Xbox 360 launch window. Now Team Ninja is celebrating the milestone with the fighter’s debut on both handhelds and Nintendo hardware with Dead or Alive Dimensions; an installment not destined to push the franchise further, but to reflect on what the series is about while showing off the capabilities of Nintendo’s new handheld.
New System, New Audience, Same Old Dead or Alive
DOA Dimensions is not a new installment, but more of a director’s cut since most of the content are ripped from older games. For the first time, all the fightable characters from the series are playable in one game with the exception of Nicole, a guest character from Halo. In addition to having the largest roster in DOA history, all the stages and music are also from older DOA’s along with one new stage inspired from Team Ninja’s last game, Metroid: Other M.
For ones who never played a Dead or Alive, it is a 3D fighter that uses a rock-paper-scissors style gameplay with strikes (punches/kicks), counter holds and grapple throws. These unique counter holds distance DOA from other fighters by fluidly stopping a strike while swapping control of the match. One of the intimidations that the series never overcame was that those that put forth immense practice only mastered countering. DOA Dimensions makes this hardship easier with three simple moves performing all the counters: high, medium and low. But do not fret DOA vets, while the game may have easier countering, DOA Dimensions contains the same complexity in every other aspect with the same movesets taken from DOA4.
Usually when a console series gets a portable installment, it feels watered down to accommodate the handheld, but Dead or Alive achieves the opposite. Not only does DOA Dimensions control better than any DOA before it, but it has also become the most accessible installment for newcomers. Like with Blazblue Continuum Shift 2 and Super Street Fighter 4, the touch screen is used to auto-perform a combo, but unlike Street Fighter’s four button macros, the character’s entire movelist is listed. Because of that, it is incredibly tricky to accurately scroll, find and choose a move during a fight.
Team Ninja delivers the same shock with the 3DS like with what they did with the Xbox and Xbox 360: they released a Dead or Alive around a system’s launch window and shows off the graphical capabilities of the system. All of the characters and stages are very detailed with some crisp texturing and it all runs with a silky sixty frames per second. Put the 3D on and the game looks even better with a realistic feel of depth but with a lower framerate, an element fighting fans cannot afford to lose. It is surprising that in only two months after the system’s launch, Team Ninja have already set a new graphical standard for the 3DS that even Nintendo has yet to achieve.
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Culminating 15 Years of Story in One Cartridge
DOA Dimensions has many modes that deliver a nice variety for a fighting game, though these modes end pretty quickly with little reason to come back, including its new Chronicle mode. Dead or Alive has never accumulated a great story and it is only harder to keep up with it when the games launch so few and far between. Chronicle mode solves that by telling the entire story of DOA 1-4 through the point of view of the four ninjas Kasumi, Hayate, Ayane, and Ryu Hayabusa and their involvement with a corporation named DOATEC (apparently pronounced doh-uh-tek). Aside from Helena later on, the ninjas take up most of the entire story with the other characters are simply there as fighting fodder.
Chronicle mode is meant to be the first thing you play in the game since it is practically a long tutorial, holding your hand with mid-fight pausing to teach countering, grappling or other techniques. Because you are never given true freedom in a match, the Chronicle only serves the beginner and is not meant to play again once beaten.
One unforgettable part of the Chronicle that needs mentioning is that the story is delivered via multiple types of cutscenes. Some cutscenes are highly detailed, pre-rendered scenes from DOA4 while some are rendered in-game. However there is a third type of cutscene, one that is so odd that the only way to describe it is to call them mannequin scenes. Like an Old Navy commercial, the characters stand frozen in unfrozen environments. So while a character’s body stands still, you can see water flowing, electricity pulsing and even their hair blowing from the wind. It is hard to think why they chose to do such an odd design choice since it breaks immersion and is very disturbing (or funny) to watch, especially if you hate mannequins.
Game Design 101: Fighters Need Replayability
Returning to DOA is the Arcade mode – a staple in fighters. In normal Arcade modes, you select a character and then fight a few different CPU opponents until you face a boss in the end. While Dead or Alive usually designs their arcade like most fighters, Dimensions decides to do things differently, where every character fights the same exact opponents on a fixed difficulty, mostly easy. The exclusion of customizing the difficulty is a horrible design choice because anyone with a bit of practice can slaughter it in no time and never look back.
Finally, a new and interesting mode that has been introduced in Dimensions is the Tag Challenge mode, where you and a partner, either a friend or CPU, go after twenty different challenges. Some missions require going against one or two supped up challengers with a select amount of extra lives just in case. While the earlier missions are a cakewalk, the later missions become a fun challenge to beat with a friend. I say friend because playing with the idiotic CPU gives you as much of a headache as it does a handicap. Like the Arcade before it, the lack of customizing challengers diminishes its replay value.
On the multiplayer front, DOA Dimensions supports both local and online options, and both perform very well for one-on-one fights. While I never experienced any lag or other network issues from most of these matches, it can get tough starting a match since players are given the option to opt out of the match before it starts. Sadly, with the exception of playing the Tag Challenges locally, there are no other multiplayer option, so replayability is only determined by how much you like to fight your friends (and vice-versa). In addition, DOA fans might be happy or extremely upset knowing that the auto-perform option with the touchscreen cannot be turned off, so it’s less of a game of who did the most practice and more of a who can outperform the other.
One part of Dimensions that Team Ninja hasn’t skimped out on was utilizing some of the 3DS’s unique features, such as StreetPass, SpotPass and Play Coins. If you are in the vicinity of another Dimensions owner, your profiles carry over via StreetPass with the ability to fight a CPU version of your favorite character. The SpotPass feature automatically downloads a new costume each day for your characters, though it is only planned for thirty days after the game’s release. Lastly, you can spend ten Play Coins to either unlock costumes that you haven’t unlocked yet in Arcade mode, or unlock some of the roughly 1000 figurines that you can collect throughout the game.
Reflecting on the Reflection
It is heartbreaking that know there is a magnificent fighter in this cartridge, but some odd design choices hinder its potential. However, even with the lack of its traditional options, it is definitely a worthy purchase if you enjoy the one-on-one play of Dead or Alive or are curious to see what the series is all about. It still plays better than any DOA or handheld fighter before it, and is fun to pop in for a few rounds of Free Play. Just don’t expect any other form of long-term use out of it.
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