Have you checked out these videos for Dead or Alive 5? If not, you should. Spoiler alert: Ayame spins around a lot.
It’s been over six years since Dead or Alive 4, and whether or not you think Tecmo Koei completely undermined the legitimacy of their series with the much maligned Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball–which they did–it’s still a solid fighting game franchise. Sure, you can’t take it seriously, but as fighting games go it’s not a loner in that regard. Despite everything, the series has proven itself to be a finely tuned, precise series with top notch visuals. And no, I’m not just talking about the girls.
On that note, it should be mentioned that developer Team Ninja has revealed that Dead or Alive 5 will feature character-specific breast physics that will also change depending on the character’s outfit. Whether this is a prudent investment of resources probably depends on your perspective, but at any rate it seems to be built into the 3D fighting game business model these days.
In these videos you’ll see a lot of the fan favorites: we’ve got resident ninjas Hayate and Ryu Hayabusa (also the protagonist of the Ninja Gaiden series), British assassin Christine dukes it out with Russian, ex-Spetsnaz Bayman, and of course the obligatory ladies Hitomi, Ayame, and Kasumi make an appearance, the latter going on to fight guest star Akira Yuki of Virtua Fighter fame. This is the first time Dead or Alive has featured a character from another game’s roster and it may just be the beginning, keep an eye out for future reveals.
The classic DoA elements are all here: Counters, environmental interaction, throws, and a couple nice air juggles. But one of the most interesting things here is the clusterflock of action going in the background of these fights. These are called “Blockbuster Stages,” crazy stuff happens in its own but with a solid Power Blow into a Danger Zone, the player can also cause the environment to react in various ways.
As if the apparently out of control construction equipment and random explosions wasn’t enough, in the newest video, “Hot Zone,” Christine and Bayman fight it out in the middle of an active warzone complete with crossfire and a crashing helicopter. It’s absolutely out of control.
Videos in chronological order of release:
Ninja Fight!
Girl Fight!
Another Girl Fight Followed by a Big Reveal!
Warzone!
If you’re absolutely dying to get your hands on the demo, according to the official Dead or Alive 5 website you can get access to it if you order Ninja Gaiden 3. But the reviews on that have been mixed, according to MetaCritic.
[Connor Cleary is a video game columnist and critic, a freelance web and graphic designer, and an aspiring fiction writer. He is a reviewer at GameShark and an occasional opinion and analysis columnist at Gamasutra. His freelance design business is Four Stair Multimedia and Design. You can follow Connor @The_Blue_Key, or at fb/TheBlueKey, or check out his writing archive on tumblr, The Blue Key.]