|
Ready... FIGHT!
(No, this is not an election special.)
Those of you who see every XBox Live-enabled game I play through your freaky MSN-integrated notifications are no doubt waiting on pins & needles ever since you saw I picked up Dead of Alive 2: Ultimate Edition last week. So, in short: it's the ultimate edition of the DOA franchise, which is itself perhaps the finest fighting game ever devised. Of course, that means almost nothing coming from me, since generally I hate fighting games. But I love this one, because I love the control scheme SOOO MUCH. For whatever reason, when you're flailing away at the analog sticks and the kick/punch buttons, the motions you make seem to have an intuitive connection to the actions you see on the screen. Yes, there are hundreds of combos for the obsessive to memorize, but if you're like me, you can also get in some satisfying whupass through some creative button mashing.
So what makes this version "ultimate"? More obsessive aficionados than I will talk about blah blah blah counter system blah blah blah throws blah blah blah. Basically, this is a remake of DOA2 for the XBox (previously it had been on PS2 and... Dreamcast? I don't actually care enough to Google-check). Of course, DOA3 was also kind of a remake of DOA2 for the XBox, but with some additional characters who don't (all) show up here (Hitomi's an unlockable character here). DOA3 was already impressive graphically, and DOA2:U mainly tweaks the impressiveness with some new lighting effects. I'm sure fanboys would tell you there are X more polygons, and that the environments now include deformable isoflavons or something, but the high level is "like DOA3 but a little nicer looking."
OK, so why do we care? For me, one reason only: online play. Yes, DOA2:U supports XBox Live, and it seems pretty responsive. This is awesome, since I never played DOA3 unless folks were over, since it gets old fast playing the computer opponents in the "story" (ha ha) mode. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can do tag matches online -- this sucks, since tag matches against the AI are a lot of fun.
So I'm calling you out Doug & Chris -- get yer XBox Live on. We gots some rumblin' to do.
(OK, fine, it's also the ultimate edition because they've included hundreds of unlockable costumes for the characters -- between 10-20 each -- and unlike in previous games, made unlocking straightforward: just beat the story mode for that character. Some costumes can be unlocked at easy, some at normal, some at hard. It's weirdly addicting; I keep taking fifteen minute breaks between doing other things to unlock just... one... more!) 4:22:38 PM () 
|
|
