Dead or Alive 5: Last Round

There are still a few developers out there who seem to know how to design their games with women in mind, and Team Ninja is one of them. And if in your case "women in mind" happens to entail dirty thoughts about certain body parts, say, just south of the neck; well, at least in this case you'd be right. I'm joking of course, but all kidding aside, while the secondary sex characteristics of the human female are perhaps th emost immediately noticeable feature of Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, it's still a solid fighting game with lots to offer. So keep reading to find out what we found.

Saving the Best for Last

Dead or Alive 5: Last Round ("DOA5LR") published by Koei Tecmo and developed by Team Ninja, was released on Windows PC on March 30th of this year, though it had been available to PS4 and Xbox One users since late February. And that's just the first advantage that console versions have over the PC version – another is that the consoles (at least the 8th-gen ones) have two more arenas than the PC version. At least we can say that both versions feature all 34 playable charcters from the get-go, most of them with alternate outfits. But Team Ninja is completely up front about the fact that the PC version does not offer the same breadth as the console versions – the website even has a helpful chart comparing the content available in each version, along with system requirements. An online mode for the PC version was supposed to go live in July, but Team Ninja seems to be having some problems with getting it finished. The beta version is available, but there are still lots of bugs. Of course, since the game is pretty much just a suped-up version of 2012's Dead or Alive 5, console players should have no problems stepping into the online arena. In any event, the PC version has its weaknesses, mostly due to the fact that it's really just a port of the console version, and hasn't been designed for PC from the ground up.

Lots of Words, but Very Little Gets Said

The storyline in DOA5LR is (to put it mildly) convoluted, confusing, incoherent, and really only there to show off the various characters and give the player a chance to get a bit of practice. There are basically two parallel storylines: The first one takes place some two years after the previous game. Donovan, the series' main antagonist and former head of DOATEC (the Dead or Alive Tournament Executive Committee), is gone, and Helena Douglas has taken control of the organization founded by her father, intending to rebuild it and direct it towards more noble ends. In order to show the world that DOATEC is no longer what it was before the fall of Donovan, Helena announces the fifth Dead or Alive Tournament, inviting most talented fighters from every corner or the globe to particupate in the ultimate fighting competition. She hires the ridiculously extravagant DJ and Muay Thai boxer Zack as her assistant. Zack, who will also host the tournament, travels around the world to personally invite several of the fighters to the tournament, putting pressure on them when he needs to.

The second storyline revolves around Kasumi, daughter of the the leader of the Mugen Tenshin ninja clan. Kasumi is searching for her clone, Alpha-152, who had been activated shortly before the destruction of DOATEC's TriTower complex in Dead or Alive 4. She is being hunted in turn by her half-sister Ayane and her brother Hayate after leaving her clan's village without permission, a crime punishable by death. A woman on the run, Kasumi ins't exactly interested in participating in the highly-publicized DOA tournament. She continues her search for Alpha-152, fighting whoever gets in her way. Some of them are former employees of DOATEC's biotech division working more or less undercover for Donovan's new organization MIST. Kasumi eventually figures out what exactly has been going on, who is responsible, and where her clone might be hiding. The really confusing thing is when Ayane and Hayate appear to kill Kasumi, another Kasumi shows up to fight her clone in the MIST laboratories. The storyline is only about four hours long, but after you're done you're either going to be totally confused and possibly even less informed than you were before you played through it, or you're one of those rare players who's able to make out the big picture behind all these strange events and really follow the story. I'm in the former group myself, unfortunately.

Not Much Junk, but a Whole Lot of Jiggle

One thing DOA5LR has going for it are the controls. Even the keyboard is surprisingly easy to use effectively, once you get the hang of it (or customize it however you like). It's even easier if you use a controller, as the combat system is built on the paper-rock-scissors principle. This means that there are only three basic actions to use if you want to beat your opponent to the ground; every action defeats exactly one other action, and each one can only be defeated by one other. This is how it works: Attacks beat Throws, Throws beat Holds, and Holds beat Attacks. Each button has its own action associated with it, with a fourth button that blocks. The gameplay mechanics are for the most part pretty simple – you won't have to use any ridiculous finger acrobatics to reach first place. If your timing is good, and especially if  you know how to correctly anticipate your opponent's moves, you can also launch a counterattack that deals additional damage.

Things really get interesting, however, when the characters unleash their combo sets. Once you get started, there's no turning back – the best combos are composed of a series of attacks, steps forward or backwards, and throws that have your opponent laid out in no time. The sheer number of possibilities can make it easy to lose track of things, but there's a convenient pop-up list of button combinations available that you can open up during a match. Once you press a button, the list will let you know which combos you can finish with. If you find reading about all this to be too stressful during a match, you can switch into training mode where you'll be able to carry out all your attacks in peace on an unfortunate sparring partner. Other modes include Time Atack, Versus, Arcade, and more. The possibilities are endless, really, and that's the whole point.

If you don't feel like fighting, there's always photo mode, where you can view computer fights from just about any perspective imaginable, in order to get th eperfect snapshot. And fans of mission-based gameplay will not be disappointed, either, as there are tons of different challenges to complete and unlock various titles. DOA5LR offers a wide range of options to pass the time or to improve your fighting skills, though the most notable option of all has got to be the setting that allows you to control the physics of the female characters' breasts. "Off" is pretty self-explanatory – they don't move at all, like they're cemented on. "Natural" is, as you may imagine, the most realistic option. "DoA" is, let's be honest, what could be described as ideal for those "special times". Not exactly small to begin with, the two objects bunce around like crazy at the slightest movement, and it's not hard to imagine these smart-looking young ladies blwoing through the competition with nothing more than these two powerful arguments.

It would be boring if each character fought off all comers using the same set of skills, but don't worry – each character's fighting style is completely unique. The big meathead characters use pure brawn to bring doen their enemies, whereas other rely on speed and agility or tactical finesse. And here the possibilities are once again overwhlelming, with 34 characters to choose from when picking your favorite, in additional to customizable outfits and hairstyles.

Bang, Pow, Boom!

Purists of the world, unite. DoA5LR actually offers you to chance to play the story mode in the original Japanese. If you're good at nihongo, this should be a lot of fun, as the English synchronization isn't really worth writing home about, not least due to some rather flat dialogue. No other languages are available, but there are subtitles available for several of them. The powerful impact noises on the other hand do a great job of underscoring blows being thrown on the scrren, and the music is also fast and aggressive enough to put you in the right mood for fighting. Aside form the various impact noises, there are several effects that are caused by the environment. If you try to slam your oppenent into some construction scaffolding and it all comes crashing down for instance, just make sure you don't have the volume up too high. The soundtrack is more or less fully customizable; that is, you can select which tracks will play at all, and how and when they should be used in the game. You can also decide whether you think they should be played in a specific order, or wheher you'd rather just listen to whatever happens to come up on random.

What a (Mostly) Wonderful World

The characters in DoALR are highly reminiscent of those in Final Fantasy XIII. The flawless, smoothly drawn faces just look like something from Square Enix. It's not so detailed that you can see the unique movement of each individual hair, but in a fighting game, that's not all that important, either. The characters look great, even if the facial expressions come off a bit stiff and lifeless at times. The characters are all completely different from one another, from petite young ladies to muscle-bound men with tree trunks for arms. The individual arenas are also cool to look at – whether it's a Japanese temple, an oil rig, or a war zone, the level designs are extremely diverse. If your hardware is up to the task, the game can be played up to 4K resolution, though the backgrounds are not always as nice to look at as the chracters, and unsightly features do pop up from time to time, even in the HD versions.