Dead or Alive: Dimensions is a decent version of the Dead or Alive franchise on the 3DS.
Team Ninja is known for two amazing video game franchises. One is Ninja Gaiden, and two is Dead or Alive. In the world of 3D fighters, you really need a unique fighting system to stand out from the crowd, and that's what Dead Or Alive is known for; that and their disproportionately endowed women. Now Team Ninja has taken the best bits of their fighting game franchise and compiled a game for the 3DS known as Dimensions.
If you never played a Dead or Alive game before, the combat's pretty simple and easy to pick up. You have four basic commands: punch, kick, hold, and throw. It's pretty easy to string together kicks and punches for combos, and using holds are a great way to counter someone who continuously uses the same attacks. The game also features a Triangle system, where strikes, holds and throws work like a rock-paper-scissor game. Also, like Super Street Fighter 4 on the 3DS, you can execute moves by simply tapping on them in the touch screen.
As the series progressed, so did the stages that battle took place on. Dimensions features a smattering of stages selected from just about all of the DOA games. Most stages are multi-tiered venues that feature all sorts of hazards to knock your enemy into or over, like through windows leading out to a balcony or falling down several sets of stairs. Even pinning someone up against a wall and bashing them into it is a great way to deal extra damage.
The meat of the game's single player mode lies in a mode called Chronicle. Chronicle serves as the game's main story mode, quickly bringing you up to speed with events traveling across all four main Dead or Alive games. The story's told using the game's in-game graphics engine with a mix of still shots and full-motion cutscenes. Unique to this version of Dead or Alive, all characters are fully voiced acted with English-spoken dialogue and befitting accents. Unfortunately, the game's story is still hard to figure out even after the game's offered up every piece it has.
In between Chronicle's cutscenes, single round bouts are fought. It's here where the game introduces you to the fighting mechanics. This tutorial does a good job of slowly easing you into the game and then ramps up the difficulty as its five chapters progress. The difficulty never gets up to the point where it becomes so cheap, it deters you from finishing.
Dimension's arcade mode is stripped of story entirely. Instead, you fight a string of one round matches where your goal is to finish as quickly as possible. It's rather misleading to call this kind of mode Arcade, as Arcade is usually the story mode that offers proper endings to a character's journey. Time Attack would have been a much better fitting name for this mode.
Another single-player mode is called Tag Challenge, which has you and a computer controlled teammate battling it out across 20 different missions. The missions start off rather easy with extra chances in case one of your teammates gets knocked out, but they become incredibly difficult near the end. The problem with the tagging system is your partner is computer controlled. If you drop down below a certain amount of health, they'll automatically tag themselves in and take over. Sometimes they do a great job; other times they do a completely abysmal job. The tagged out player uses this time to recuperate, but the constant swapping in and out becomes distracting when you just want to focus on beating your enemy.
There's also Free Play, which lets you fight first-to-two rounds battles with anyone of your choosing, and a training mode. The training mode doesn't do a very good job of instructing how to pull off moves, though. It just gives you a list of moves and an opponent to practice them on. You'll have to figure out the correct timing on your own. Dimensions also has an online mode, as well as local, but it isn't as fleshed out as Dead or Alive 4. After a match is won, you're returned immediately to the search menu to find another game. Latency is present, but it isn't completely crippling. There are also modes utilizing StreetPass and SpotPass. Passing someone in StreetPass nets you a challenge called a Throwdown. SpotPass downloads new costumes and figurines to your game. Figurines can be collected through the various single player modes as well.
Dead or Alive: Dimensions is one of the best looking games on the system. Obviously, it doesn't look as good as Dead or Alive 4, but it still passes for a next generation game. The characters are well built, the textures are well done and the game moves at a super silky 60 frames per second with 3D off and 30 with it on. The special effects in the stage's backgrounds have made it over to the portal screen as well. Walls splinter and windows shatter, making getting knocked down a tier look incredibly painful.
It's a pretty decent sounding game too. The sound effects of punches and kicks sound like they sting and bruise. Grapplers pull off bone-crunching holds that make you wince, and explosives that detonate from your opponent bouncing off them cause you to feel sorry for them. The music has stayed pretty much the same from previous Dead or Alives, so there's no new surprises. If you enjoyed the soundtrack of those games, you'll enjoy it here. The one major improvement to the game's audio is with the voice acting. Gone are the Japanese voices and each character speaks their dialogue in English with accents that are appropriate for their backgrounds.
Dead or Alive: Dimensions won't offer fans anything new. It's even a trimmed down version of the last iteration in terms of features, but what it does offer is a competent fighting game on the 3DS. The fighting is fast and frantic and Chronicle makes somewhat of an effort to explain the story behind the tournaments. Unfortunately, the lackluster online setup makes it hard to stay hooked considering you're never given the option for rematches. Collectors will get a kick out of trying to amass the numerous amounts of figurines, but single-player arcade fighting fans won't find much long lasting appeal with Dimensions. Still, if you're hard-pressed for a portable fighting game, Dead or Alive: Dimensions fits the bill.