Dead or Alive 2 and The Plight of Fighting Games

Dead or alive 2 stands as a testament to my experience with the Dreamcast. I didn't have a lot of games but I can honestly see why the 14 year old me loved this one so much. It's easy to pick up and feel like an expert, the gameplay is fast and frantic, it felt very Japanese (no English V/O), and the character design… well… I was a teenage boy at the time…

DOA 2 to this day is a fun and fluid fighter. The system is a very simple punch/kick/counter which I enjoy greatly. I haven't played a Dead or Alive games since this, which is surprising considering how much I liked it. DOA 2 Hardcore came out on the PS2 and I wouldn't mind picking it up now, but back then I couldn't justify $50 for a game I already had. Then there was the sad story that DOA 3 was an xbox exclusive…

The fighters are all varied and each technique has a slight learning curve. I tend toward the faster, lighter characters like Kasumi. One thing I liked as a kid was that the difficulty is mild for a fighter. I managed to beat the single player "campaign" in about 10 minutes, and that includes the fairly difficult final boss who will block and/or counter every move you throw at him. I believe my fastest run through was somewhere around 5 minutes. It's a 3D fighter so you have full movement and this game relished in that freedom. The counter system is absolutely fantastic and even a noob like me was able to time my blocks to quickly snag an opponents leg and lay down a counter.

The "story" in DOA 2 is laughable at best. Some of this can probably be blamed on bad translations for the subtitles. There are sometimes brief cutscenes before a fight in which the two combatants interact, say something non-sensical, then fight. Relationships are established in just a few sentences without any prerequisites to hilarious results. For instance, a girl is fighting a girl:

Girl A (Player): "Gasp! Girl B!"

Girl B: "you were always better than me"

Girl A: "no!"

Girl B: "Not Anymore!"

Fight Ensues

Or this gem

Girl A (Player): "Boy A!"

Boy A: "Do I know you?"

Girl A: "Aren't you my Brother?"

Boy A: shrugs

Fight Ensues

These scraps of story elements just don't suffice. Granted, this is how fighting games tend to be, I've played some that still manage to squeeze in some story. Even "Evil Zone" had better dialogue then DOA 2… that's just sad. Luckily the gameplay of DOA2 is fun enough to save it and make it a wholly worth while title to invest some time in.

"Profoundly Immoral Zone" would have worked too

Dead or Alive 2 will always have a special place in my because it is one of the few fighters I actually invested some time into. I don't seem to get into fighter games very often and the genre is somewhat foreign to me (*ahem* mostly because I suck). I tend to agree with Yahtzee in his opinion that its pretty mind numbing to know you would have to practice a game day in and day out for years on end learning every characters subtle nuances just to be able to not get beat by a person banging the controller against their forehead.

My friend pointed out that the same four people have consistently been the world champions of games like Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter and so on, so obviously Yahtzee was wrong in his opinion of fighting games. My friend both proves and disproves Yahtzee's point. Yes you can be good enough to beat anyone, but you have to put in such an ungodly amount of time playing as every character learning every move to get that good.

The video above is a prime example of Pwning at a fighting game. The player using Ken, Daigo (also known as the beast) is able to press back at precisely the right time on each impact to perform a perfect block. It's incredible to behold. Needing to obtaining this level of skill isn't a flaw in how fighting games are made, but it is their plight. People just aren't that hardcore (read: Obsessive Compulsive), that's why only 4 people are consistently world champions.

I think it's the idea of the genre that appeals to me. Fighting games are very much like a real fight. It's not just about what you do, but what your opponent does. Unfortunately I've never found the time or patience to invest in a good fighting game and I highly doubt I ever will. Plus, I have been burned by the genre before, I'm looking at you Super Smash Brothers Brawl. That said, I still love fighters and I will keep playing them. I won't ever be as good as Daigo, but I still think it's a fun genre and I only harp on it out of love. I suppose I need to make a Mid Years resolution to just play fighting games more. I plan on getting Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 when that comes out, and BlazBlu: Continuum Shift is on my wishlist. I won't spend hours and hours mastering my technique, but a little friendly competition every now and then is nice, perhaps determining who does the dishes that night.

I have a Dreamcast (and it's painted gold)

As a child I can think of no fonder memory than opening a new game. Alright, maybe a few, but come on I was trying to be poetic. I loved getting games because it was a new adventure and experience. The one thing that truly trumped getting a game though were the rare christmas' or birthdays when I would get a new system. Now I've owned many over the years but to receive them as gifts is just something special. I can still remember the christmas I got my Sega Genesis.

There is one I want to focus on today however, because its life was short, the end came to soon. You probably have a good idea of what I'm talking about (I even referenced it in an earlier blog) the Sega Dreamcast. A system far ahead of its time and greatly unappreciated by the masses. So lets take a trip down memory lane and through the life of Sega's last system.

When I got my Dreamcast hype was in full swing. It was the holiday season and I opened it christmas morning, with Sonic Adventure to play. I played the heck out of that game. In fact recently when my friend Jeremy picked it up we both had trouble navigating the land and figuring out what we were supposed to be doing. I don't recall having any trouble with it as a child. Still, even if it was the most frustrating game in the world nothing would have stopped me from playing it and loving it on that christmas morning.

Things went well for quite some time. I continued to get awesome games like Jet Grind Radio, Sonic Adventure 2, Skies of Arcadia, and my favorite, Shenmue. For me Shenmue was it. It was, and still to this day is, one of the greatest games I have ever played. Games like Grand Theft Auto IV give you this pseudo sense of freedom but Shenmue just felt more authentic. Essentially in any GTA game what you have is a giant cardboard city where you can go in to certain buildings that serve a specific purpose. The city doesn't feel alive, one bar is the same as the next.

In Shenmue they managed to really make the town feel like it was alive. Sure it was much smaller than Liberty City, but that didn't matter. You could get to know the people of the town and just live every day of the main characters life as you saw fit. You even had to get a job! It's easy to see why this game turned away so many, it was far beyond its time, like the system it was made on.

I remember toward the end of the Dreamcast's life, while flipping through an official magazine looking for new games, not finding any. I wondered what was going on with the devs. Then the magazine stopped printing the next month. It was so sudden. I was still pretty young and not quite so plugged in to games and the industry so I had no idea about the fate of the Dreamcast.

To this day it bums me out that more people didn't give this awesome system a shot. Still, I supposed the market would be a bit crowded if it had survived and Sega made it to the current gen. That would mean you'd have to choose between PS3, Wii, PC, 360, or Sega's machine. Now Sega sits as a developer and publisher, making some good games, and some… just alright ones… Here's hoping Sega can stay in the fight, and regain its glory.

So I suppose what I mean by all of this is that I want to start doing some reviews of Dreamcast games and an overall critique of the system itself. My wife and I are just about settled in our apartment and I have the Dreamcast all set up. We'll see how much nostalgia has clouded my mind when it comes to these games, it'll be fun! Oh and if you were wondering about the title of this entry, yes my Dreamcast is actually gold, I spray painted it a while back and it is awesome. I'll try to post a picture eventually.