In the beat’em up world each game has something unique to offer. With street fighter it’s awesome moves and attacks, in Tekken its combos, and for DOA its Boobs. Now I’m not saying that’ s all the game has to offer, its just that scantly clad women with big boobs and revealing clothing is what comes to mind when I think of the game. Cleavage aside, with the release of DOA 5 Ultimate edition I had an opportunity to find out what else this game had to offer.
With some new features this game has had an upgrade. In this Ultimate edition they have made all characters playable including some new ones from the virtual fighter series. This gives them the biggest roster in DOA history, with you being able to play as all the fighters you know and love. In addition to having a huge roster Tecmo have also made it possible to play on a tag mode, so you can team up your best fighters and battle it out with friends either at home or online.
The story is exactly the same as the normal edition so there is not much new there. For those who are not familiar with the story DOATEC was destroyed and Donovan’s evil plan was stopped. Helena the daughter of the founder of DOATEC has decided to rebuild the company and to host the Dead or Alive 5 tournament, however a sinister plan is being hatched in the darkness and you discover it and must stop it from happening. There are a lot of fighters in this Ultimate copy and with the bigger roster you will have more adversaries to beat up in the game modes.
Another thing which had an upgrade is the Training. This is not just a tutorial and free training, you now also have command training and a combo challenge. Though these additions are good to help hone your skill as a DOA competitor, the tutorial is incredibly long as there are 42 parts and each section has its own individual tasks. Personally it too me over 3 hours just to get to number seven, at which point it became extremely difficult to pass one of the tasks. Now I’m not saying that everyone will have the same problem here, but I am pretty sure that this is something that will take a great deal of time to complete. The Command Training and Combo Challenge are exactly the same, and though they are very time consuming they would probably make you very good at the game eventually.
So in this game you have the usual fight mode, with the added benefit of the newly added tag mode which can be implemented on every one of the battles. You have your versus, arcade, time attack and survival modes but now as an extra you have a team fight mode in there as well. Here you can team up to 7 fighters at one time and battle it out against 7 other characters. How many fighters you pick is up to you, so if you choose less than 7 members to your team the computer will pick out the same amount for you to fight against. Dispute this being a little different, with the tag system added this does feel quite similar to what we have seen in games such as Tekken. However with that being said the actual gameplay is something else.
If you are new at this game and have been playing Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur and so on, you would be used to multiple buttons having their own individual type of attacks, such as Light, Medium and hard attacks plus throws. DOA however has a different style of controls, a style which was usually used in the earlier style of beat em ups. This style feels similar to the original DOA games, so in a way it is admirable that they haven’t changed their style or controls and are staying true to the original gameplay. With that being said the controls work very well for a seasoned DOA player. With players being able to string long combos together as well as the addition of being able to throw an opponent in a combo, there are variations for each characters combos.
Then there’s the tag team element to take into account. During the middle of a combo you are able switch between fighters so that your next fighter can carry on where the last one left off. If you are really good at this you will be able to string together a huge combo and wipe your opponent out with ease, something that seasoned players will have a lot of fun with.
There are a few things however that have bothered me when I have been playing this game. The biggest problem I would say is that during some fights with the computer, the Ai would be able to string together a huge combo right off the bat that would take over half my health. Annoyingly it seemed impossible for me to block any of this, and when I say ‘any’ I mean that I couldn’t block from the beginning even if I pressed back or block. I weirdly could block the next time they attacked but not that once, and this felt like there was a delay in the reaction time from when I pressed the button and the action to be taken. Which leads me to my second issue, the slight delay time from when you press a button to the action taking place. For me it felt like some fighters wouldn’t react as quickly as the others. Now I know that each character has their own attributes, but to me that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t respond as fast as anyone else. With certain characters this has lead to me being pummelled in a corner as my characters slow reaction time made it very difficult to counter attack. This was very frustrating as I was getting my butt kicked and no matter what I did. I couldn’t attack, I couldn’t counter and I sure as hell could block so as much as I was enjoying the round I wasn’t enjoying the slow reaction times.
The background music and sound effects are what you would expect from a beat em up. The background music inspires you to kick your opponent’s ass and the sound effects are men and women grunting, which as this is DOA seems to be a pretty important part of the game. You also have the sound effects from when you interact with your environment. Whether you are crashing through walls, being thrown down stairs or even falling from a platform high in the air the sound effects are perfect for each interaction.
Ok so now we have got that out of the way, we can get to the good part which is the graphics and as always the characters costumes. Firstly the backgrounds and stage settings are well designed with a minimum of resolution issues. When it comes to the graphics in general they have stayed with the classic DOA style but giving their characters an up to date look without loosing that classic DOA look. Now the female character design has always been something that DOA has been known for, the women are extremely hot and can really fight, which to me makes them just hot tough chicks. So graphically they are hot (and the guys don’t look to bad either) and there are also additional costumes that you can unlock as you play the game. Most of the female costumes as you can guess are revealing but some aren’t. There are some costumes which look an awful lot like Playboy bunny outfits, so the perverted person in you can enjoy looking at these animated hotties and see them show their stuff.
Lats but not least a couple of final things worth noticing. You have some extras available to you that can be unlocked or can be used from the start. One of them is an exhibition mode which is in the verses mode. This allows you to use any of the alternative costumes, though you cannot t keep them until you unlock them. You can also choose to watch a battle between 2 or even 4 fighters, but unlike the other modes there is no heath bar. You can watch the fight for as long as you want with participants showing off their skills by always fighting at the highest level. In addition for all of you people who like photo opportunities, you can take a snap shot of the fight at any moment save it and add it to your gallery. There are a few more extras available to discover, but I don’t want to spoil too much for you.
Pros
+Sticks with the DOA traditions
+ Good combo system
+ Large and Diverse roaster
Cons
- Slight lag on the controls
- Tutorial far to long
- Hard to block when fighting
70 / 100XP
This is a good game which stands true to its roots with the standard and style of the gameplay. There are quite a few things that made this game stand out as being a great title, but then the issues that I saw made me second guess that initial thought. If you are a DOA fan then I guarantee that if you add this to your collection you will be able to get back into the flow of things and be able to unlock everything. If you have never played DOA and you were thinking of getting this, its worth a shot. It is fun to play once you know what your doing and though it might take some time to get the hang of, I am sure that by this time these issues that I found wouldn’t even bother you as you would be a master by then.
-Random Man 5000