Preview: Dead or Alive 5

Team Ninja is a very different ship under the command of current leader Yosuke Hayashi than it was during Tomonobu Itagaki’s time as captain. Where once were grog-soaked shanties about buxom wenches and graphic tales of mass slaughter, Hayashi instead leads his crew in choruses of far greater moral fiber, songs of a developer growing up and trying to make amends for the gallons of virtual blood it has spilled and the unnecessary strain it has put on countless virtual bras. But while this radical change in direction is apparently not working out so well for Ninja Gaiden 3, we’re ready to believe that it could help out in today’s competitive fighting climate. Dead Or Alive has been out-punched by VF, out-juggled by Tekken and out-chested by SoulCalibur, so maybe a reality check is just what the series needs to stay relevant. 

If, of course, that reality check involves shoving ninjas into electrical wiring so that they explode, chucking people off skyscrapers and forcing girls to fight until they’re all sweaty and dirty. Yes, there does seem to be a grittier vibe to Team Ninja’s latest. Yes, it does seem like some of the female fighters have had their ‘top-heavy’ slider pulled down a little. And yes, it’s good to see the team move away from the emotionless fighting inflatables that have populated the franchise for years. But don’t mistake any of this for realism – this is still a fighter where silly things can and invariably will happen, albeit one which on Hayashi’s own admission isn’t designed to go toe-to-toe with the technical or the hardcore.

That’s not to say that those looking for depth won’t find it here, mind. A refined sidestep should offer greater defensive potential, new ‘Expert Hold’ counters offer more risk and more reward than their long-standing, spam-friendly counterparts (which seem to have been nerfed somewhat to make the new counters viable) and in the Power Blow system, DOA5 has something akin to Ultra Combos or Critical Edge attacks, flashy set piece attacks that appear to relate more to stage than to character (although character specific variants can also be expected, if Tina riding people down the stairs in Dimensions is anything to go by). These also seem capable of branching in various ways – a victim knocked off a building might be given one last QTE-style opportunity to grab on and haul themselves back up, for example, but the waiting attacker gets a free mix-up opportunity that will make guessing wrong very painful indeed. 

It’s still early days for Dead Or Alive’s first outing since the launch of the 360 and its first PlayStation 3 outing but initial signs are promising. Once a mash-happy fighter where claiming to be 99 years old made the Barbie dolls a bit bouncier, this now appears to be a mash-happy fighter where pretty young things smash each other up until both of them are all wet and messy. The new captain, it seems, doesn’t run his ship all that differently after all.