- Dead or Alive 2, the basis of the entire fighting system is the circular relationship between three types of moves: holds, throws, and blows..
Product description
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Dead Or Alive 2: Hardcore for PlayStation 2
Review
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Not content with the wide accl that the Dreamcast version
received when it was released earlier this year, Tecmo has added
even more new features to its ship fighting game, Dead or
Alive 2. The game, now titled Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, adds new
costumes, stages, and voices to the mix, and for the most part
the game has retained its extremely smooth look.
The original Dead or Alive was powered by Sega's Model 2 arcade
hardware, and it played quite a bit like Virtua Fighter 2 with
the addition of special danger zones that delivered various new
effects. DOA2 breaks out of the Virtua Fighter mold: It has full
3-D movement, a rather necessary countering system, and overall
it's a more interesting game.
DOA2 offers a variety of mostly standard modes, from the regular
story mode, to versus, tag-team-battle, training, and survival.
The tag-team-battle mode is pretty exciting, because DOA2's tags
occur almost instantaneously. This makes it easy to start a
juggle combo and keep the juggle going. Unlike Tekken Tag
Tournament, DOA2's tag-team battles are down to the last man, so
one-on-two fights can and do occur. The story mode consists of
one-round fights and hilariously meaningless prefight exchanges
between characters. The horrific English voice work only
amplifies the humor.
While DOA2's fighting leans toward the button-mashing side of
things, there's plenty of depth to be found, thanks in part to
the countering system, which makes countering moves as easy as
hitting back, and to the "free" button, which lets you walk
around the stage in full 3-D. This occasionally leads to counter
syndrome, where both players run at each other and immediately
counter over and over again, hoping to catch the other player off
guard. It looks incredibly silly. Still, regardless of your
methods, DOA2 is a fun multiplayer game, and the four-player
option in tag-team-battle mode is especially exciting.
DOA2: Hardcore looks simply amazing. The animation is smooth, but
the character models are what really stand out. The fighters all
look extremely smooth. Little things like clothes, hair, and
tassels move appropriately, almost never clipping into the
characters' bodies. And, of course, the series' trademark
gimmick--large, bouncing s--is as prevalent as ever. The
soundtrack is a little annoying. While the fighting sounds are
great, the music--mostly a collection of fairly generic and
slightly annoying guitar tracks--fails to impress. The other
piece of audio, newly added for this "hardcore" edition, is
English speech. While you can reset the speech to Japanese and
turn on subtitles, the game defaults to some of the worst voice
work in recent memory. The delivery is off, the script is
absolutely lame, and overall it makes the game laughable.
Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore is a pretty good fighting game. The
fighting system is fast and fun, though not the deepest system in
town. Still, the pretty graphics make it a good showpiece
(though, to be honest, it doesn't look that much different from
the Dreamcast release), and the game has enough options to make
it a worthwhile purchase for fight-hungry PS2 owners.
--Jeff Gerstmann--Copyright © 2000 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