Topic: Dead or Alive: Dimensions

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I made my own review about it, if anyone would like to read;

Introductions:
Dead or Alive has a series of games in the past 15 years, but none ever released on a Nintendo handheld. Now this has brought to a change since Team Ninja couldn't refuse making a their first 3D game. Dead or Alive has been famous about it's fighting combined with the fascinating art and women, and thus this game is more for adults. (Just making sure the readers are aware of this) Fighting games mostly different from each and one in perspective. For example the release of Super Street Fighter 4 3D, it has a complete different perspective on the battles than it is on Dead or Alive. So if you were ever thinking of buying both of them, don't worry about the thought you're having the same kind of game bought twice. Dead or Alive: Dimensions also uses new cool gameplay modes and features, like the use of the gyrosensor and play coins. Each 10 playcoins can earn you a present with something new. The gameplay modes include a Chronicle mode, where you can play a series of events in a storyline. It tells the past few stories about the previous Dead or Alive games and also brings you step by step in tutorials how to fight. An arcade mode which is small, for now. There are only a few waves of battling AI-controlled opponents, but a lot of unlockables to win. A survival mode that starts of from a 10-opponents match to the last and brutal 100-opponents match. When playing you'll have CPU players attack at you. Defeating each one of them gives you a small portion of health and points will be stacked. There are also boss-like battles between a few numbers of defeating which makes it just more dificult to reach the end. The Tag Challenge are tag mode fighting where you get to choose two fighters versus one/two CPU players with extra large health and strenght. Free play and Training will be set for all the freedom you need in the game, including a Showcase of your figurines and 3D Pictures you can make with the figurines. There's a lot of things to do, thus, but most of them after completing will be ignored. And the game becomes smaller. This is so far the introduction.

Gameplay:
As I mentioned before, Dead or Alive uses a different sort of perspective than Street Fighter or other common fighter games like that. It's easy to compared to Soul Caliber, but DoA uses the stages where you battle in a realitive way. This is something I like, whenever kicking someone of the platform you get a nice view of how you are pretty good in this easy thing. And it's useful to kick people out the platform. The best stage seen using this is the Geo.Lab (a Metroid themed stage with Riddley shooting fireballs and grab you with his claws after being kicked of the platform.) In position, the stages are well made and look impressive. The battle gameplay is also very easy too use. Using the button gameplay, you have your d-pad to move or the +pad. The A-button features kicks and the X-button for punches. Only two meelee attacks, with this the ability to make combos as you please. Your Y-button will be for blocking, and the B-button can be used for throwing your opponent. Again, these are pretty simple button controls. Making your combos is harder though, but you can just rapidly press both meelee buttons and you have a combo! If it's hard to find the combo you're looking for, you can look at the combo list on your touchscreen. It could be used to battle with, too, but I honestly don't advice anyone to do it. It might be useful to quickly touch one combo that is just too hard to form in button-gameplay.

Graphics:
Dead or Alive is firstly set to expierence the gameplay in something new; 3D. The expierence is not the fact that there are likely "pornographic" images involved in 3D, it's the whole game. Though the people who own a 3DS have been pretty familiar with it now, so we would like to see some good graphics each time playing a new game. The 3D, firstly, is something they could have brought more zest to it. To be fair honest the 3D for this game brings some cases of motion sickness at times because of it's poorly small 3D effect that has rarely good material aside from the cutscenes. The graphical art is something well formatted for the 3DS. Meaning it can be compared to the DoA 4 on the different consoles, but just not with the high resolution. Stages/surroudning and the characters have a great visual with both 2D and 3D. The effects such as slowmotion-explosives or throws certainly will bring "wewt" moments.

Network:
Dead or Alive uses the new network features the 3DS is capable of, and the use of online gameplay and local to get you playing longer. The impressions for all these so far is that they haven't thought about their functionality all too great. About the SpotPass they've added, they bring new downloadable content every day. This however is just mere costumes for your playable characters so far. It might be nice to collect them all, but it's not really something to look foward to every day. Getting the notification weekly about their schedule for the upcoming costumes might be worth checking out if you indeed are trying to collect them. You'll need an internet connection every day for that, of course. For those who don't have the game yet it's unfortunate because the costume downloads event already started from May 20th and last until June 22nd. You can always pick up another time between June 24th and July 27th, for those who aren't downloading now. That's whatever SpotPass does now, and maybe there will be more event coming.

StreetPass bring then the "game" into more action. By downloading Throwdown data (you also get one weekly via SpotPass, this is data from one of the Team Ninja members) you can fight a mere ghost data which is just a CPU-controlled player, but with edited information from the one you met via StreetPass. So in other words; Your opponent you met will contain information that includes their Nickname and rank. The opponent's most chosen character to fight with, and the rank will depend on the CPU-controlled actions. Throwdown matches also can't be played twice. Winning one can earn you new figurines and points, but losing it will be depressing since you can't play again. Also knowing you're not actually fighting the person is a bit lame.

Internet matches and local gameplay only feature one mode. That is fighting your rival. That's okay, since it's the whole game and all, but there are a lot gameplay modes on DoA and it would have been interesting if some of these could also be played online. Also, internet matches has some uncomfortable issues. The matchmaking is based with making lobbies, that will be created automaticly when searching for opponents online after choosing the match details, (3-wins, 2-wins. Regional, Worldwide) but these take time. Also, the player and the host have the choise to accept battling eachother, or refuse. Refusing will boot the other out and many players abuse this option to kick out higher ranks/lower ranks. It would have been easier if all you had to do is "press ready" to battle. Things would go much faster. After finally finding your match, you only can choose your character. The stage will be picked randomly, and that's no fun when you have a favorite stage that's rarely picked when playing online. Finishing the match winning will give you points for your rank (A, A-, B, B-,..., F), and there will be no option to rematch. You will have to look for another player when being redirected back to the matchmaking. In overall, the internet gameplay is real slow and doesn't have much gameplay option.

Conclusion:
Dead or Alive may seem to have a lot of gameplay modes and options, but like mentioned in the introductions will get ignored after being done with it. Finishing the chronicles more than once would be just out of boredom or either because you didn't follow it the first time. Arcade mode/Survial/Tag Challenge may seem all fun, but you're fighting endless and it gets annoying after a while. If these had multiplayer function however, things could have been extended more. Right now, I'm already quite bored of Dead or Alive. Fighting online could still be fun, if things go fast and don't be pain due the fact you have low options for online multiplayer. I'm hoping they are working on other network functions such as other downloadable content via SpotPass.

There aren't many people who buy this, stating the latest news about the game not even being at the top 40 for this month, and that might be due the Super Street Fighter being already a hit amongst most. And now, to finally give it points, Dead or Alive: Dimensions will be awarded with a mere 6.8/10

Note my evaluation points for the game is much less than the ratings of sites like IGN and this.