Every day is the "End of the Week"

     I hate arcade fighters. I really do, they just don’t appeal to me. Streetfighter 4? No. I refuse. Blazblue? Forget it. I’m never touching that game again. Yet somehow I was talked into buying Dead or Alive: Dimensions by a friend who is as repulsed by the arcade fighter craze as I am. I didn’t understand it at first, but as soon as I picked up the game, I realized what I had very poorly judged this game. Dead or Alive: Dimensions is simply amazing.

    I could enjoy this game without being good at it, which is a quality that I find is extremely rare in games today. Not only does it offer a touch screen alternative to button inputs, it seems that all the more complex inputs just add more flash than combo power. It’s a strange thing for a game to do. And having never played a Dead or Alive game before, I was instantly hooked at how I could just button mash to figure out what each individual punch, kick, grab, and counter could fit into a string. There really is no end to how you can put simple combos together.

     First off the graphics are absolutely gorgeous. Crank the 3D all the way up and you’ll be swimming in beautiful interactive scenery. The textures for everything is spot on and even the water looks great, despite the physics for it is a little off. The characters are even more stunning than they should have a right to be, with fluid movements and jaw dropping 3D. In game there is also a photo mode that allows you to collect figurines and take pictures of them. I wasn’t too sure about this mode to begin with, as there’s over 1000 figurines to collect, and oddly enough, over half of those that can be collected are women clad in not much more than a low-cut jumpsuit. That being beside the point however.

     Regardless of how ridiculous some of these characters may look, they actually have unique move sets without being ridiculous. There’s only 2 characters who use mythical energy projectiles and the rest use unique styles to fight. This is actually one of the qualities I first noticed in comparison to some of the other arcade fighting games. It’s pretty much solely mixed martial arts. And that is WONDERFUL. My favorite character is Brad Wong, and he drunkenly stumbles about the battlefield. I love this character because his attacks are all over exaggerated movements that look insane to the normal person’s eye. There’s also a ton of characters who also have certain traits that give them advantages and disadvantages as well. For example, Brad Wong can stumble in and out of the direct line of attacks. His natural sway moves his hitbox closer and farther from his enemy, and so sometimes the player can get lucky and dodge an attack without even doing anything. There are also other instances like this and every character has some strong and weak point to exploit.

     One thing that really took me off guard were the stages as they are all interactive. In each stage you can utilize the environment to your advantage by knocking your opponent down mountainsides, into rocks, over logs, through windows, into electric fences, over rails and down stairs. The best part about it is that all these instances do an appropriate amount of damage. It’s satisfying to get little bonuses to your already massive damage output and it’s a great system to turn the tides on an entire battle. I’m sure a lot of people would complain about this though as being cheap and a wild card that required no skill to exploit. But that is where you would be wrong. It takes a deliberate sense of genius to actually set up and pull off that kind of attack and while this sometimes occurs just out of luck, it’s a lot harder to do than it looks like. Especially when all it takes is to swivel and turn their own trap into an advantage to you.

     As for the sound, the game offers a nice variety of sound effects and noises, but the music is pretty much everything you’d expect from a Dead or Alive game. If you played one of them, you’ve already memorized every note in the theme and know how to play it in an alternate key on that accordion your grandmother got you for your birthday (even though you have no idea how to play it). But everything else is wonderful. In the options, you’re given an opportunity to change the match voice, which is the announcer who usually wails out “KO!” or “FIGHT!” or the incredibly aggravating “YOU LOSE!” That’s a really a cool bonus, mostly cause Tina’s cute southern drawl makes ever loss an incredible experience.

     Over all, the game’s a great buy. Even though it released a while ago, I still play it in between lectures and lab at college and with as many new games that come out with little more than 16 hours of game play lately, Dead or Alive: Dimensions is a breath of fresh air in the replay-ability meter. To me that tells volumes about how great a game can be. So, if your friend has this game, play it, and if he has this game and you half way like it, buy it. The multiplayer, even online, is nearly always seamless. Combos are instant and the matches can get intense. If you know anybody with this game, you better start practicing now. It’s incredibly addicting, especially since each match can last upwards of 5 minutes.

     You can’t really beat any of that can you? You can’t blame lag, every character is broken beyond repair, and every stage is one new battle after another. Yeah. It’s that great.