Dead or Alive, still kicking or finally dead?
Since launching, not many games were able to capture the graphic capability of the 3DS well at all, but Dead or Alive manages to keep many of the characters and backgrounds detailed as possible. The game is very beautiful on the eyes and will remind fans that Team Ninja did a great job at pushing their game's graphical aspects into consideration for their final product.
However, like many fighting games, the story is very bland and although the game is set around a tournament, there are many cut scenes in the game that make you wonder how your character managed to pick a fight with another. For example, there's a scene where Zack is climbing the tower from Dead or Alive 4, but before he gets to the top, suddenly your character picks a fight with him. Why? The game won't tie that in, except the fact that you're supposed to pummel the poor guy down.
The fighting is smooth long as you do not enter 3D mode. As many reviews have already stated, the game enters a pretty noticeable 30FPS. That is half of the 60FPS that the game can perform without it. Like a lot of fighting games, being able to defend and counter your enemy's attacks while dealing the best amount of damage is taken into account. The game's strategy can consist of learning how to delay attacks, but also effectively knowing how to counter punch someone. Those who rush in will witness a barrage of holds that end up making players lose a fight.
Needless to say, it is quite fun and requires some form of patience. Tag battles here require a strategy as your teammate will tag themselves in if your health gets incredibly low. While this occurs, players should time the amount of health that is best before tagging back into the fight. In the game's tag team mission mode, players will progress through the difficulty by learning how to effectively fight with the AI teammate. Your AI teammate is only used as a dummy who takes damage while you recover. This is probably due to the fact that the developer wants players to effectively learn how to win a fight themselves and not depend on the AI to win. As you progress through the missions, enemies become a lot tougher and players will do a lot less damage. This can become frustrating for those who end up panicking at the sight of some of the enemy's damage.
Online is the main attraction of the game, but it can be incredibly lag intense. Due to the current lack of sales of the game as well, games can take a while to find. However, once the fight begins, you will be able to pick your favorite character and costume to dish out the pain. The only real complaint is that I wished that the fight record was in wins/loss fashion, opposed to wins/total fights.
Through streetpass, players will also receive special downloadable costumes to use in their fights. In addition, you will also get a special AI controlled enemy that you can fight in order to add onto your fight record. By winning a fight against the Streetpass downloaded foe, you can win figurines that are more rare than the ones given throughout the game. These figurines are collectibles that give players incentive to continue playing.
What can you do with the figurines? Take photos, gaze at the characters in different poses and enjoy some eye candy in 2-D or 3-D form.
Overall, Dead or Alive: Dimensions is a nice portable fighter that is fast paced and enjoyable. However, one could only wish that Team Ninja could flesh out the 3D mode a bit better, but hopefully some updates can take care of that. The game is not perfect, therefore, I rate if 8/10.