Adam Hall

Publisher: Microsoft | Developer: Tecmo | ETA: Out Now | Price: £17.99 Inc VAT.

In all of the 18 years I’ve been alive, I’ve never got into a fight, been close to it, I admit, but never really had the pleasure of getting my face beaten to the other side of my head or indeed casting such abominations upon someone else. Despite this, I’ve always found the idea of fighting quite exciting (and I use that term in the loosest sense possible) especially if it’s with someone in a big novelty suit normally worn by sport team mascots as they prance around like fools trying to impress the audience.
DOA3 has made my interest in fighting a possibility, not only do I not get hurt even after taking a multi-hit combo, I get to sit down in a comfortable chair to witness it all, it’s magical!
Now although DOA3 doesn’t include novelty costumes for the characters to wear while I’m beating the living crap out of them, it does have some mighty fine ladies and I’m sure you’d agree that they’re an adequate substitute! DOA3 has become somewhat notorious as a result of having scantily clad women cavorting their way around the screen in an almost seductive manner, and games like DOA: Extreme Beach Volley Ball use such materialist interests that so many men have as the main selling point of the game. This makes for a heavily pretentious, but strangely arousing experience! DOA3 fronts no such pretension and tries, and succeeds to a certain extent, to make itself out to be a game of relative sincerity. Nevertheless, it’s all about the fighting and fortunately; it’s done quite well indeed!

Gameplay
When I first put DOA3 into my Xbox, I must admit, I wasn’t expecting much. “It’ll probably be fun, I’ll be entertained for a few hours” I thought, but when I looked at my clock and then my hands to realise many more than a few hours had passed and the Xbox controller was still in my grubby mitts, it put a smile on my face. I love DOA3, it’s one of the most compelling fighting games I’ve played in a long time and will definitely remain on my shelf for many years to come if I can help it.
Of course, though, like every other game in existence, DOA3 doesn’t come without its fair share of problems. The most definitive probably being the fact that it’s heavily button-bash friendly, you’d be surprised how far you can get without really knowing any combos or moves a fraction more complicated than a standard punch or kick. Now although this makes for the shallowest learning curve ever to grace a video game, it does mean you can still lose regularly even if you’re a pro. With Tekken – DOA’s archenemy – this element of inanity is obsolete and a gamer that’s well experienced with the game will no doubt prosper. DOA3 comes across as more of a child’s fighting game (despite sexual connotations!) whereas Tekken stands in for the real men! Don’t let this dishearten you, though, DOA is still a damn good game.
The loading times in DOA3 are worthy of a mention too, not because they’re amazingly fast and hardly noticeable, but because they’re so blatant they might as well be slapping you in the face with a cold fish and because the music playing over the top seems to jitter for a second or two. When I first heard the jitter I was a bit confused as to whether is was in fact an error, it sounded like a feeble attempt at change in pace in the song to add diversity, but the more I heard it, I realised it was out of time with the rest of the song. It’s definitely a jitter, as if the game’s concentrating too much of loading the game than playing the music properly, how reckless!

DOA3 is also quite fast, you’ve only got split second gaps sometimes before your foe starts to pound on you and although this may sound exciting, it makes the game feel somewhat disjointed in that there’s no fluidity between moves. It lacks the elegance that Tekken is popular for and portrays a far more brutal experience despite appearing rather dainty upon first impressions.
Despite this, the DOA trademark is still present in this little beast; you can still knock people through specific walls and off HUGE drops that this time around, cause far more damage than past titles of the franchise. Not only is this an excellent element of diversity when the repetition of standard fighting starts to get mundane, it gives you an upper hand AND looks so god damn cool! Pretty much every level has something you can fall off, but the ones that don’t normally have electric fences or some other form of hazardous outer rim that if smacked into, detonates in a shower of sparks and bright light.