My week hasn't been all that great, but, things have been up and down, and I'm a bit bored.

So I decided I should do a little review on Dead or Alive 3. Daniel and I bought it a few months ago for 15-ish bucks (used). It's a part of a series, although I haven't played the previous two. There's another one coming out soon, Dead or Alive: Ultimate, which promises to be good as well. Here's a quick rundown on it all.

Graphics: Being a release game, it's very, very well polished. They did a superb job on the models, each of the characters has its own look, (including the females *mutter*) and you even get that whole "each individual strand of hair" look. Very solid.

Gameplay: What it lacks in originality, it makes up for in a very solid, balanced set of characters. There are 13 characters total, each having 3 different costumes (different models or colorings), some with more. Each character has between 60-200 moves and combos available to do, and each of these have different animations, some of which provide for a very cool looking fight scene. (Daniel can tell you the same thing) It's all fairly well balanced, too. As for the story mode, the plot was weak, easy to complete, and more like something they threw in for the heck of it. Each character had a 1-2 minute cutescene after having completed the story mode, which were quite cool, but still weak in plot. There's a sparring mode in which you can just fight an invincible opponent, go through all of your moves list, focus on specific combos, really a very nice touch. The shining star of the game is the versus mode, which comes in two version: 1v1, and tag team. Tag team works like it sounds, you slap in your ally at any time, and occasionally do combination attacks along with your ally. When it comes to levels, there aren't too many, (about 10 for 1v1, 5 for tag team) but each has its own effects (explosions, breaking through walls, jumping off ledges to new areas) and all look very pretty.

Sound: This aspect was also slightly lacking, as the music was not of the greatest variety, and did not support the mood of the game well. Each character also had all their own sounds, usually for each move and combo. Sometime a little reptitive, but not usually.

My score: 8.7