The basics are all here with this chapter in the DOA series, starting with the Story Mode in which you'll
experience each character's story as they kick and punch through the stages to reach their destinies.
Then there's the Time attack mode (go through the stages in the fastest time, Survival (beat a succession of
baddies), Team Battle (form a team of up to 7 characters and use most or all of them to be the winner once one
team is defeated in full), Versus mode (1 on 1), Sparring (i.e. a practice mode) or Watch (sit back
and let the CPU characters duke it out). You can also look at snapshots taken in Watch mode, view
player records and playback saved replays. Online play is also available here.
Rather than try and work out the different combos, since there's scores of these and all available via
the Command List when you pause a game, you'll experience an awful lot of 'hit and hope' action here like
every other DOA game I've played before. In fact, it is rather difficult, even in Normal difficulty, so
there's not much to be gained from trying out fancy moves as you'll just get wiped out before you've had chance to
half-complete one! That said, you can sidestep as you could in
Dead or Alive Ultimate
so that's a bit of a help in avoiding the kicks and punches of your enemies as it doesn't always work.
Another irritation is that in some scenes you can't fall off the edge of the gameplay area
onto new sections like you could in
Dead or Alive Ultimate,
but here there is some of that brought into it, so bounce the old man with grey hair down the stairs
- and that's not a euphemism, but on the Xbox you could smash someone through a wall or plate-glass window
and fall to our, otherwise certain fate but here, next level of ground down, be it a mountainous area or a
lush, snowy and icy landscape. However, this seems to happen on a very few and far between occasion, by
comparison, so most of the time you just reach the 'edge' of the playing square which is rather bemusing
and frustrating.
|