Death by Degrees is a mess from top to bottom.
The bad: Terrible Tekken 5 demo; too much loading for way too long; bad camera; boring combat; dreadful stealth; frustrating adventure element; boring and shallow characters.
Many fighting game characters are remembered for their weird, but always entertaining storylines. Much of their appeal also comes from the lack of information, fans need to either fill in the blanks or buy the next instalment of the series to learn more about the characters. Namco decide to provide its fan base with more information on Nina Williams, a Tekken fighter, in the form of Death by Degrees. Unfortunately, Nina and her game fail in every aspect that they attempt, making the whole experience a frustrating one.
Nina’s mission is to enter an illegal fighting tournament on cruise ship and provide support for two MI6 agents who need to record a meeting held by the higher ups of evil corporation. Things obviously don’t go as they’re planned and Nina’s mission becomes to record the meeting herself. The storyline isn’t particularly interesting even with sprinkles of sci-fi, apocalyptic outcomes and flashbacks. Nina isn’t a very interesting character herself, although she comes off as a strong female fighter, attempts to expand her to more then just a fighter with boobs fails and the fact that she rarely has much to add to the conversation doesn’t help.
In its basic form Death by Degrees is an old school adventure game with combat and mini-games thrown in. The adventure sequence feels a lot like past Resident Evil games, complete with a semi-stagnant cinematic camera. The biggest problem with the adventure elements is that the game does a terrible job of explaining what it is that you’re are suppose to do and how to do it. A memo sheet is given to from the start, which lists your objectives, but it may as well not exists, since the listings are too broad and general. There are items, such as books and sheets, which explain in further detail what it is that you’re suppose to do, but if you miss one, you’ll find yourself wondering about the ship without a purpose. Often these items aren’t easy find and this results in more aimless walking around. This problem doesn’t occur in the beginning of the game because most of the ship is locked, leaving you with only a few areas that need searching, but as you progress more of the ship opens up and the problem gets worse and worse. If the game were more linear, then the experience would have been an enjoyable, since the actual puzzles are fun, instead the adventure sequences leave you walking around the ship in frustration.
Apart from wondering about, there’s also a good deal of fighting that you’ll be doing through the course of the game. The combat system is mostly controlled by the two control sticks. The left control stick moves Nina and makes her dodge by flicking it in given direction. The right control stick is used to perform attacks by flicking it towards the enemy and to block by timing the right control stick flicking. There are melee weapons and firearms to be found also and they too are controlled by the control sticks.
The camera is the biggest enemy for the combat system, often times Nina will get surrounded making her impossible to be seen. There will also be times when you cross certain invisible barriers, which will shift the camera, making you adjust your attacks. Due to the design of the combat system, Nina will perform the same moves over and over again to deal with her targets. There is a modifier button and some moves to unlock, but you’ll often resort to basics, simply because they are much easier to perform. The melee weapons in the game are extremely handy allowing you to do more damage and still use the very simple combat, the firearms on the other hand feel clunky to use under the right control stick system. Nina also has a “critical strike” ability, which triggers a small mini-game where as the left control stick becomes a crosshair and the right analog stick executes the attack. The “critical strike” drains Nina’s “focus” but allows her perform massive damage to her opponent. Although the ability is a useful, most of the basic enemies can be taken out with simple hand-to-hand combat, leaving “critical strike” for the hand full of bosses in the game. All in all the combat isn’t very deep and it’s often boring, serving only as a wall for the adventure sequences.
Although Death by Degrees is mostly about adventure and action, Nina does have the opportunity to perform stealth kills, but the bad camera angles make them impossible. Most of the time the camera isn’t positioned in a way for you to sneak up behind the enemy, there is an option to use an over the shoulder camera, but when that’s being used Nina is forced to run, which alerts the enemy guards to your position. The enemy AI isn’t well programmed for stealth either, there are times when you’ll find yourself standing two feet away from the enemy separated only by some chair, but not get noticed. You’ll usually just get caught on purpose and fight the enemy hand-to-hand because the stealth mechanics are completely broken and not worth effort.
Between all the combat, stealth and puzzle solving, Death by Degrees throws a couple of mini-games to try to keep the experience interesting. There are three sniper and three stingray mini-games found through the course of the game. The sniper mode is probably the most enjoyable thing to be found in Death by Degrees; the controls are right on and there are no problems to be found. The stingray mini-game gives Nina control over a small robotic helicopter, which she needs to be directed towards a given objective. The stingray mini-game isn’t as fun or as tight as the sniper mode, but it’s still far better then anything else found in Death by Degrees.
There isn’t much to be said about the audio in the game. The soundtrack is basically forgettable and the two-footstep sound doesn’t help much. The little sound effects that are present are recycled constantly and without mercy. The voice acting isn’t bad, but the script is terrible and Nina rarely says anything.
Visually Death by degrees doesn’t fair much better. Everything in the game looks dated and has a low texture look to it, but still somehow finds the ability to load constantly for long periods at a time, including when you dive underwater. The frame rate also drops to single digits towards the end of the game. Through all this, Nina finds a way to tear her cloths a couple of times, change outfits and tear them up again, leaving her half-naked through a majority of the game. The hand full of CGI movie is the only positive in this whole mess of visual garbage.
Death by Degrees was obviously made for fans of the Tekken series, but no hardcore Tekken fan should have to deal with this trash. The game lasts around fifteen hours depending on how many times you get lost, features some unlockables and three difficulty settings. The problem is that the game is just so bad you won’t want to finish it and fifteen hours of terrible isn’t particularly a good thing. There isn’t anything in Death by Degrees that is worth the disc it’s pressed on and should not be bought by anyone, no matter how much they enjoy Tekken.