skysaw
11-15-2002, 10:08 AM
Was looking forward to this title for six months. Bought it yesterday, and played it with my girlfriend for a couple of hours last night. Returned it today. Here's why.
1. We hated the characters. There's only two or three that have any visual appeal at all to me. I like the idea of a dark feeling to the graphics, but I just didn't like the character design. Why do they all need to look like super-villians taken from an old Batman comic?
2. The scenes have no variety. They are all fairly small arenas, and have generally the same look to them. There were no differences in play, either (compare to DOA3 where strategy changes per scene).
3. VS mode not well thought-out. After every match, you have to reselect a character, costume, fighting style, and location -- you can't just say "play again." It also does not keep track of wins/losses. We kept just choosing the first arena since it was half a second quicker, and they all looked about the same. There is no location randomizer.
4. Very limited number of accessible moves, and few were very interesting. I don't feel like I need spectacular flying through the air on fire, twirling, magic attacks, but I wouldn't mind seeing a few more interesting moves now and then. We were never able to perform more than one throw per character, and there were no counter-attacks, except for a throw counter which just looked like a regular attack.
5. I played through story mode with one character to unlock the "Chojin" fighting style. I could not tell the difference between the two styles.
I feel pretty dissappointed. I was really excited to finally play this game, but it just didn't deliver. Yes, the graphics are very good, but they are in no way appealing in a "gee, this is fun to play/watch" sense. The only thing I really liked about them was the reflections on the floor -- quite nice in fact. The colored lighting was cool, but it seemed a bit arbitrary. It was there to some degree in every arena, and seemed to shift around for no reason.
I do intend to try out all the upcoming fighters. But so far, nothing is touching DOA3. I'm guessing my girlfriend and I have beaten each other to a pulp several thousand times, and we're still not bored of it. We're still discovering new strategies, and laughing our asses off at the little surprises that sometimes come up in game.
1. We hated the characters. There's only two or three that have any visual appeal at all to me. I like the idea of a dark feeling to the graphics, but I just didn't like the character design. Why do they all need to look like super-villians taken from an old Batman comic?
2. The scenes have no variety. They are all fairly small arenas, and have generally the same look to them. There were no differences in play, either (compare to DOA3 where strategy changes per scene).
3. VS mode not well thought-out. After every match, you have to reselect a character, costume, fighting style, and location -- you can't just say "play again." It also does not keep track of wins/losses. We kept just choosing the first arena since it was half a second quicker, and they all looked about the same. There is no location randomizer.
4. Very limited number of accessible moves, and few were very interesting. I don't feel like I need spectacular flying through the air on fire, twirling, magic attacks, but I wouldn't mind seeing a few more interesting moves now and then. We were never able to perform more than one throw per character, and there were no counter-attacks, except for a throw counter which just looked like a regular attack.
5. I played through story mode with one character to unlock the "Chojin" fighting style. I could not tell the difference between the two styles.
I feel pretty dissappointed. I was really excited to finally play this game, but it just didn't deliver. Yes, the graphics are very good, but they are in no way appealing in a "gee, this is fun to play/watch" sense. The only thing I really liked about them was the reflections on the floor -- quite nice in fact. The colored lighting was cool, but it seemed a bit arbitrary. It was there to some degree in every arena, and seemed to shift around for no reason.
I do intend to try out all the upcoming fighters. But so far, nothing is touching DOA3. I'm guessing my girlfriend and I have beaten each other to a pulp several thousand times, and we're still not bored of it. We're still discovering new strategies, and laughing our asses off at the little surprises that sometimes come up in game.