"More than just a shallow excuse to ogle hot anime women"
STORY 6/10
The story of DOA2 is much more involved than a Tekken game, with individual character's stories being played out during the game, rather than just written up in the game booklet. All of the characters seem to be out for some form of vengeance or some other ulterior motive other than just winning the DOA competition. The story itself seems quite appealing, but is poorly executed and hence the average score. I would have liked for the story to be more prominent as it seems that the characters have a lot more going on in their lives than your average fighting game.
GAMEPLAY 9/10
DOA2 has a very arcade feel to it, which I found quite refreshing after playing Tekken too much. It has many modes that you find in most fighting games such as Story, Time Attack and Sparring mode, but the standout modes in this game are Survival and Tag. In Survival you are placed in the arena and made to fight opposition consecutively without any breaks. When you defeat an enemy you regain a fairly substantial amount of health and items appear for you to collect which give you bonus points. This flowing, non-stop action is very fun and a great way to build skills for the other modes. The other standout I mentioned was the Tag mode. Where Tekken Tag Tournament ironically failed to succeed in what it was NAMED after, DOA2 has excelled. Tag mode gives you many options, such as one player against the CPU, or a co-operative battle between two ppl and the CPU. If you have a multi-tap you can also play against another team. Another fantastic feature of this game is that a lot of the environments are interactive; objects can be destroyed, or you can smash people's heads into walls, or throw your opponent through windows and off big drops.
GRAPHICS 9/10
Simply stunning. Every graphical aspect of this game is simply amazing. The environments are beautiful and some are very large. The characters are beautifully designed and presented (perhaps going a little too far with the bustiness of some of the girls. Personally I never knew of any 16 year olds THAT well endowed). The motion is spot-on, with the movement of the characters both during combat and during CGs being very realistic. Speaking of CGs there are many little cutscenes during for your pleasure during story mode, and some great intro movies. There is also a CG gallery of the lovely ladies from the game in bikinis and fashion clothing which you can put into a slideshow and ogle over.
CONTROLS 9/10
Originally I hated the controls, but this was because I was very used to Tekken. Where in Tekken there are two buttons for punch and two for kick, there is only one button assigned to each, leaving the X for throws and the square for counter-attacks. Despite my initial agitation, I quickly got used to the idea of having a one button throw/counter-attack and I quite enjoy having this luxury, even though it does take a lot of the challenge out of it. The controls also allow complete movement around the opponent and environments.
SOUND 6/10
The sound is mostly typical baseball-bat-on-a-piece-of-steak / kicking-a-cabbage sound effects. Some of the noises like arms breaking just sound pathetic, others are just normal noises. For the most part the music is average but serves its purpose, although the tracks provided by Japanese band Bomb Factory are outstanding. The overdubbed American voice acting is often cheesy and always dreadful.
VALUE 10/10
This is the kind of game you want in your collection. And now that its gone platinum its quite cheap. It is easy to just pick up and play if you've got some mates around who aren't console fan boys and allows for co-operative fights when you start feeling the intensity from the competition and frustration of one-on-one vs mode battles. There are also many different modes for you to choose from and characters to play as. Overall, fantastic game that really sets the standard for future fighting games in almost every regard.