Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Waste of time"

Ah, Dead or Alive. It's a famous fighting series known for solid and fast-paced fighting gameplay and its roster being composed of guys and unrealistically busty ladies. Dead or Alive: Paradise capitalizes on that last description, putting these ladies in bikinis and throwing them on an island for a tropical vacation. As alluring as the concept gets, it's hard to see much of the Paradise that this title suggests.

Based off of an earlier game for the Xbox 360, the game has been brought to the PSP, as you can see. It doesn't prove quite well, though; the graphics are pretty, and the frame rate is solid in the few games you actually get to play, but the overall product is a different story.

The story has you choose one of the girls, and you stay for around two weeks (?) on the island trying to make friends and shop for new clothes. It's kind of half-baked, with cheesy conversations sometimes lasting longer than games themselves, although they are, in fact, mini games. Said minigames include hopping on platforms in a pool, and the famous sport that started the whole Dead-or-Alive-girls-in-bikinis concept, beach volleyball. It's quite hard to say that these games are fun, though, probably because of how short they are accompanied by a bit of a clunky control scheme. In Pool Hopping, you basically press any of the face buttons, but matching them will help you hop across faster. The longer you hold the button, the longer you will jump; sometimes though, even a light press will have you skip a single platform and land you straight in the water for an instant loss.

What's confusing about the volleyball minigame is that it's viewed as if you were an audience on the right-hand corner behind your own character, which provides a quirky perspective when trying to return the ball to the other team.

I have only played for less than 10 hours, but I could not bring myself to finish a single story any longer. It was kind of the same, and there was a curfew which arrives pretty quickly after only a few (mostly unsuccessful) activities.

Overall, I'd have to commend the game for its beautiful graphics, but I don't think I can recommend the game to anyone who is interested in quality gameplay. I would be 50-50 if the person were only up to looking at these babes in their swimwear on the go, though (since the graphics are pretty.)