Product Description
-------------------
Thought you'd revived your social life after countless couch
hours playing Soul Calibur? Guess again. Dead or Alive 2 brings
more phenomenal fighting action to the Dreamcast with the
gorgeous graphics and incredibly fast gameplay that Sega fans
expect.
Dead or Alive 2's character-against-character action takes place
in gorgeously rendered locations ranging from a cathedral to a
moving elevator cage. In a special twist, characters can battle
in multiple locations in many of the areas and interact with the
environment. This means that the cathedral window is more than
just a pretty background--it's just waiting for an nent to be
hurled through it and onto the fighting platform below. Perhaps
the coolest feature of all is the Tag Battle mode--available to
one-, two-, and four-player games--that enables fighters to
summon a teammate into the action. A total of 12 male and female
fighters are available, each boasting a slew of basic and special
attacks, tag-team combos, reversals, and throws.
.com
----
While you may not be familiar with the original Dead or Alive--a
run-of-the-mill fighting game most famous for the bouncing
s of its female combatants--the sequel Dead or Alive 2 is a
major-league contender that ranks up there with genre giants
(including Soul Calibur and the Tekken series).
Dead or Alive 2 features drop-dead gorgeous visuals, with
gracefully animated 3-D characters rendered in great (and in some
cases, downright naughty) detail. Not merely scenic backdrops,
the lavish 3-D arenas are also highly interactive: fighters get
slammed and thrown against walls, and, in some cases, they can be
thrown through windows and off ledges, with the camera viewpoint
following the aggressor as he or she jumps down to the lower
level of the arena to continue the punishment.
A game that plays as good as it looks, Dead or Alive 2 sports a
rich combat system that's heavy on the counterattacks. Gameplay
moves along at a blazingly fast pace, and the simple controls are
easy to pick up on and make executing combo moves a breeze; this
is a brawler that both button-mashers and hardcore gamers will
enjoy.
Unlike other fighting games which contain hidden features that
must be "," Dead or Alive 2 pretty much lays all its
cards out on the table from the start. There are 12 fighters to
choose from (each with at least one alternate costume) and seven
modes of play are available (including tag battle mode and a
two-on-two battle royal that up to four players can join). --Joe
Hon
Pros:
* Drop-dead gorgeous visuals
* Blazingly fast gameplay; simple yet effective controls
* Highly interactive 3-D arenas
* 7 modes of play, including tag battle mode Cons:
* Virtually none to speak of
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Review
------
Back in 1996, Virtua Fighter 2 was widely considered to be the
deepest, best-playing 3D fighter around. For the most part it
was, although the learning curve was considerably steeper than,
say, what a Tekken player would have to accomplish to master
Tekken. Tekkens, Toshindens, and, er, Criticoms aside, Virtua
Fighter 2 was the hard-core gamer's ultimate bastion, due to its
endless layers of depth and extensive move list, which only the
most erudite could master. So it came as a bit of a surprise when
Tecmo, of all companies, licensed the same Model 2 hardware that
Virtua Fighter 2 used. Until that point, no other third-party
company had used the Model 2 board to create a game. That Tecmo
was not only licensing it but apparently developing a Virtua
Fighter clone brought, at the very least, smirks from the gaming
community. Three factors separated the uncomfortably familiar
Virtua Fighter-like characters from their well-respected
brethren. The first was the addition of danger zones, which
surrounded the perimeter of each arena and caused any character
who stepped into the zone to explode skyward, causing significant
damage in the process. The second gameplay twist was the addition
of a hold button that lets the fighter use his nent's attacks
against him by way of reversals. The third and final
"enhancement" was the implementation of an obnoxious "
physics engine" that caused the female characters' chests to defy
the common laws of gravity with a panache never quite seen before
in a video game. It was only the danger zones that affected the
gameplay, but the novelty of the third enhancement struck a nerve
far and wide with young male gamers everywhere. The arcade
experience was ported home (well, Japanese homes, anyway) to the
Sega Saturn with remarkable accuracy, minus real-time shadows and
a few background details. What was retained, however, was the
slick 60fps rate, along with the modified Virtua Fighter combat
engine. A wealth of replay value was stuffed into the Saturn
port, with each character having a plethora of hidden costumes
that were with each replay of the game. Dozens of new
outfits were unlockable, with some of the female characters'
outfits bordering on "racy." Sadly, despite desperate pleas from
US gamers, the Saturn version never made it to the States,
although the subsequent PlayStation version did. The PlayStation
version, which took training-dummy Ayane and made her a playable
character, also added a couple of outfits, although the gameplay
wasn't as razor-sharp responsive as the Saturn version had been.
Now a few years have gone by, and Dead or Alive 2 hasn't exactly
been a secret. Using Sega arcade hardware, this time the Naomi
board, Tecmo once again has raised the bar on its own
expectations by adding not only multitiered levels, but
lightning-quick tag-team action as well. While the arcade
version, seen in little peeks over the last two years, evolved
into something quite substantial, it was widely thought to be
running on two Naomi boards. This was due to the huge
multileveled environments, whooshing by at 60fps, with up to four
characters onscreen at one time. Team Ninja, Tecmo's in-house
development team, declared that it ran on one Naomi board and
that the entire game would be ported to the Dreamcast, with
little to no loss of quality. Well Tecmo has finally completed
that daunting task, and Dead or Alive 2 has finally hit American
(and strangely, not Japanese) shores. The Dreamcast has no
shortage of fighting games, with Soul Calibur heading the list
and Virtua Fighter 3tb, Power Stone, Tech Romancer, Star
Gladiator 2, Psychic Force 2012, and Street Fighter III all
having their merits. Does DOA2 bring enough to the table, to
usurp Namco's Soul Calibur as best fighting game on a system
replete with fighting games? In some ways, it most definitely
does. Although the original DOA for the arcade, the Saturn, and
the PlayStation all played well enough to hold their own against
comparisons with Virtua Fighter 2, it still wasn't nearly as deep
as Sega's ship fighter. The combo system was limited, and the
depth of moves wasn't nearly as limitless as in VF2. Another
criticism was that the hold mechanism made the game too easy and
caused inordinate turtling, especially in two-player games, due
to the ease with which a frontal attack could be shut down. Dead
or Alive 2 addresses that issue and raises the curve on the
requirements needed to master the new system. While it seems
simple, it basically triples the difficulty in trying to parry an
nent into leaving himself open. Instead of just letting the
press of the hold button (Tecmo refers to it as the "free"
button) do all the work, you must now determine whether an
nent's attack will arrive at a high, medium, or low level.
Only if you've eyeballed the correct point of entry will you
successfully deflect the attack. Timing is also crucial to the
successful reversal of an incoming attack, as attempting to use
the free button too early or too late will simply leave you open
to attack. Luckily, proper use of the free button lets you launch
a heavily damaging counterattack on your nent. In fact, many
battles are decided this way, as some characters are a little too
good at reversing your attacks on you, forcing you to rethink
your full-frontal assault. DOA2 has caught up with the Joneses
and has integrated full 3D movement into the game. DOA2 allows
movement into and out of the foreground by way of the analog pad,
although the digital pad and a press of a trigger will achieve
the same results for those who like the precise feeling only a
D-pad can give you. The 3D movement doesn't factor into your
success nearly as much as it does in Soul Calibur, but it most
certainly helps. The environments in DOA2 also affect your
strategies depending on whom you're playing against. Multitiered
environments are certainly a big part of it, as your proximity to
a ledge or stained-glass window can be the difference in about a
sixth of your life bar should you take a hit that sends you
flying over a ledge, five stories to the ground below. While some
arenas can send you or your nent plummeting three or four
times, some levels offer uneven surfaces on which to fight. The
final boss, Tengu, has a stage similar to Aoi's snow-stream stage
in VF3. While there's no water running on Tengu's stage, it
supplies dips and mounds that affect where your blows will land.
It also affects when you need to use the free button, since an
nent standing slightly higher than you will require careful
consideration as to where you'll want to parry. --James Mielke
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
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