The Future of Dead or Alive

It's been a while since we've seen a Dead or Alive game. DOA 4 came out a little bit after the Xbox 360 launch and Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2, which was horrible compared to the first, a year later. Ninja Gaiden 2 has now since come out, and Itagaki has left Tecmo due to payment disputes. Tecmo looks to be a former shell of itself as one would infer from their Holiday offerings and TGS showing. I asked the question before, what's in store for the future of Tecmo?

This time I'd like to focus more on the future of Tecmo's Dead or Alive franchise. Some would like to think that Tecmo and DOA are dead in the water. It may look that way. But I see this as a great opportunity to create something new. With Itagaki gone, this opens up door to changes and possibly fixes.

One problem I've always had with DOA is that each game really never feels like a completely new game. Character animations, game menus, and overall presentation never feel worth the cost of admission. I'd like to see them ditch the Aerosmith, redesign the characters. Put more detail in them. Look how the Tekken series has changed from each game. There's dramatic visual improvement in each iteration. Besides the background details, you cannot say the same for the DOA series. The characters just aren't designed in a way for graphical improvement. They're created in an anime style with limited detail. Here's the chance to improve that. Make a new character selection interface. Redo character animations. Make it feel like a different series.

While we're on the subject of looks, Change the ribbon hair physics! They look like crap. They're unnatural and should be one of the first things changed.

Let's be honest, too. Why do we play Dead or Alive? We play it because of the ladies. You can call a donkey a horse all you want, but everyone just knows you're being a jackass. So give people what they want. Costumes. I'm talking about a massive amount of unlockable costumes for everyone, but especially for the girls. I'm not even asking for a customize feature where you could make your own costumes for your character. That would be awesome though. DOA 2 Ultimate had like 15 for the more popular of the girls. Dead or Alive 4 had like two characters with the most of 6 costumes. I want at least 30. AT LEAST! As for the unlock method. Come up with something creative. Enough with this beat the game, unlock a costume. Beat it again to unlock another one, so that you end up beating the game 30 times to get all 30 costumes. That's just retarded. Come up with something new, make it like Smash Bros where you spend coins on a capsule machine. Shit, even that's better than the old method, and I just thought of that sitting on my ass eating Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. One more thing about the costumes, make them unique and classy. None of that color palate swap shit.

So combat. This one is tricky. People argue all the time. Dead or Alive is a good game. It really has depth. I'm not just mashing. I don't care how DOA was in the past. This is a new DOA. So the reversal system needs to be refined more. Less of this guesswork and random spamming of reversals. Any competitive play I saw tons of just throwing out random reversals hoping to get lucky. Online play, I saw even more of that. If you leave yourself open like that, you should get punished. Maybe even slow down the game a little. Also I think hit detection desperately needs to be cleaned up. When someone blocks, it should look like they blocked. You should feel it too. Juggles shouldn't look like a character being poked in the air by a series of quick slaps. It should follow suit with the moves they are being hit with. I've always hated knock back system in DOA. I feel like it moves your opponent back taking away from the action and wake up games. Mostly I think it has been done to allow people chances to use the environment damage. I've never liked environmental damage, but it is something that makes Dead or Alive unique. So let's keep it. Just be clever about it. Make it not so gimmicky or too cheap.

Online play? Hmm, I don't know about this one. It's not worked with a lot of fighters and DOA being one of the fastest, it's not going to be pretty. I'll get back to you on this one.

Story wise, blah blah blah. It's another tournament. I'd like something realistic with deep story making me care about the characters, but I'm not asking for Tecmo to change the world either. Just make some good ending cutscenes without that cheesy music they used for DOA 4 and I'll be happy.

Team Ninja is still around. Tecmo, I'm pretty sure, still own the rights and likenesses to DOA. I even remember DOA 5 and DOA: Code Cronos were already in the works. Itagaki, the father of DOA is gone. With all respect to him and what he's done, sometimes you need a change in perspective to breathe new life into something. With all these hardcore deep fighters trying to appeal to more mainstream audiences, Dead or alive could go the other way. They've always had the appeal and look. This time they could finally silence all the critics. Dead or Alive saved Tecmo from bankruptcy once. Here's the chance to do it again.

Actually, let's see less of the above. And more of the below.
David

Wait, not this.


Close...

Closer...

Too Close...

There we go. This is what we need.