Dead or Alive 2

The Good
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, for many years, dominated my playing time when it came to fighting titles. I wasn't a huge fan of the 3D based fighters, such as Virtua Fighter or Tekken, as much as the Ryu or Scorpian's of old. That was until a group of friends introduced me to Tecmo's Dead or Alive series.

At first, removing the usual up, down, forward, punch cycle and replacing with less intricate moves seemed a little strange to me, but I began to warm to the design fairly quickly, especially when I purchased this updated release on PS2.

Now don't let my summary fool you, I wasn't just in love with the girls here. Sure, they aren't too bad, but it isn't exactly realistic stuff now ... is it? Anyway, what I began to realise was that DOA provided a different kind of strategy, much like Tekken as I soon discovered. Instead of mindless punching and rolling of the control stick, here it was all about timing and placement, and that actually made it far harder yet more enjoyable to master.

There's much to see and do in DOA Hardcore too. The tag team feature works a treat (as I originally mentioned here in this review, it had the better of Tekken Tag Tournament) while the other modes of play add some much needed depth.

But really, it's the visual style of each character, and the sometimes quirky storyarcs that Tecmo created for them. Not to mention the costumes.

The Bad
As I said, DOA is a hard game to master. The reward is being able to counter attacks and throw in a good number of combos to leave your enemy stunned beyond belief, but don't expect to do that as soon as you pick up the controller for the first time. That goes for the rest of the DOA series of titles, I might add.

The Bottom Line
Dead or Alive 2 went on to be one of those titles I couldn't put down for a good while. It was a well put together package, and in terms of a sequel, it clearly surpassed what Tecmo originally designed for the series.

Since DOA2, the franchise has gone on to great lengths on Microsoft's consoles (and the strange move by Tecmo to release a Volleyball spin-off game). Here, though, was where DOA really took off to become a challenge to Soul Calibur and Tekken.

So anyway, about the girls ...

The Good
First of all, the team battle mode is fabulous, just the fact of choosing 5 characters and battling in a team is addictive. Some of the moves in this game are fabulous, proving the great technology and graphics we have in today's games. The story mode has nice stories for each character. The versus mode is pretty great too.

The Bad
The game is almost flawless, but I think the story mode is far too easy to finish, and since that's the main part of this game, it doesn't feel good to play for 10 minutes and then say i've finished the game.

The Bottom Line
The result: An exciting fighting game with very smooth 3D graphics. The only thing that they could make better: Make the story mode tougher, they have already achieved that actually in DOA3 for the Xbox.