Dead or Alive a Casual Retrospective Part Dimensions

I am fascinated by handheld fighting games. They’re this strange little anomaly within the fighting game genre. On one hand, it is convenient and very cool to be able to play your favourite fighting games on the go.

On the other hand, you miss out on a large part of the fighting game experience. Fighting games are meant to be played competitively. You can play them as a single player, I do and I still love them, but they are best played in multiplayer. You can’t do that with handheld fighters.

I mean, you can, but it requires a ton of set up to do so. You need two different devices, two copies of the games, and a link cable in a lot of the older games. It’s just a complete hassle to do. I guess if you were travelling with friends it would suffice, but if you were at home, just play the console games. It’s more convenient and they play a lot better.

Still, I find handheld fighters to be an interesting part of the genre. You don’t really see these anymore because, well we don’t have dedicated handhelds anymore. Outside the Switch or the Steam Deck anyway, but one is a hybrid home console and the other is just a mini pc mased into a plastic case. It’s hard to say they count.

A lot of it is just watered down ports of arcade and console fighters. Even the Switch can’t escape those, just look at Mortal Kombat 1 on there. I’m shocked that was allowed to release. However, there are some standout handheld fighters that punched well above their weight.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 on Game Boy Advance was a shockingly great port that not only looked great but actually had more characters than the arcade and console versions. Something that was only superseded by Alpha 3 Max on the PSP which had a ridiculous number of modes that make it the most feature rich version of the games.

Of course, you can’t talk about handheld fighters without mentioning the Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Colour. It’s what the systems are known for. Not only do those games have fun chibi art styles that worked perfect for the hardware, and are super charming to boot, but they had a shocking amount of content for the time. SNK vs Capcom and Last Blade being my personal favourites out of them.

One handheld fighter I played all the time as a kid was Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection. I loved this game. I already loved the original Tekken 5, and Dark Resurection on PSP was just a better version of that. It didn’t look as nice, but it had nearly all the content of the console version, and it added even more stuff like new stages, characters, and single player modes. To this day it’s one of the best handheld fighters ever made, if not the best.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. Handheld fighters shouldn’t work, but when they do, they can be some of the best fighters out there. They can have a lot of effort put into them that make them interesting counterparts to their home console brethren.

Which brings us to today’s subject. Dead or Alive only has two handheld entries in its history. One simply being a PS Vita port of Dead or Alive 5 which isn’t worth covering since there’s a more complete version we’re looking at later in the retrospective. Also I don’t have a Vita, and don’t care to get one either. No one cares about the Vita.

The second one is a bit more interesting though. That being Dead or Alive Dimensions. Released in 2011 on the Nintendo 3DS, this is a wholly original Dead or Alive game that was made to celebrate the series 15^th anniversary. Why they would make the anniversary title a handheld spin off on a platform where most of the player base hadn’t even played the series, I have no earthly clue.

Maybe the idea was to expand the fanbase? Tecmo were close to Nintendo at the time, so they could have been trying to cosy up to Nintendo fans. I don’t know, I can’t find a reason anywhere. The only thing I know is it was made to celebrate the 15^th anniversary. I’m guessing that Tecmo wanted to have something for that, and this was the quickest way to do so.

Another reason could be due to the shake-ups going on at Team Ninja. Dimensions would be the first Dead or Alive made without any involvement from series creator Tomonobu Itagaki. Who left the company in 2008.

I’ll get more into why in the next part of this retrospective. It makes more sense to talk about that when discussing the next main game in the series. As for how it pertains to this game, my guess is that the new guys in charge of the series wanted something to ease them into the role before they took charge properly in the next game.

This is all speculation obviously. Since I can’t find a reasoning for why it was made it could be anything. It could be the devs wanted to see the boobs in stereoscopic 3D. I wouldn’t put it past the guys behind Dead or alive Xtreme.

Regardless of why it was made, it is an interesting game in the series. Since Dimensions was made as an anniversary game, it’s designed as a compilation game of sorts. Think of it as the Mortal Kombat Trilogy of the series. Or Tekken tag Tournament if you want to piss them off.

It also features some original content not seen in any other game in the series and I think that warrants looking at it. That’s not the only reason I wanted to look at this though. I also wanted to talk about it because this was the first Dead or Alive I ever played.

Yeah, my first exposure to the series, beyond the brief time I played Dead or Alive 3 at my cousins, was this weird handheld spin-off game. As for why I got it, well it was because there wasn’t much to play on 3DS at the time. It was released very early in the 3DS’ life cycle where the console was struggling and there weren’t many big games for it.

I was an early adopter and didn’t have a lot of games for the system, and there wasn’t a lot coming out I was interested in either. There was Kid Icarus Uprising, but I couldn’t play that because of its controls. Being disabled sucks ass folks let me tell ya. So, I figured why not give this a shot. I mean if nothing else I should get some nice T&A out of it. Don’t judge I was a teenager.

I remember enjoying Dimensions, but I didn’t play much of it. I played it for a couple hours, beat the story mode and played some matches, but then I put it down and I haven’t played it since. This is the first time I’m going back to this in fourteen years, and I’m interested in seeing how it holds up.

Especially since I’ve now played the other games in the series and have a better frame of reference. Doing so gave me a greater appreciation of what the game does right but also made me realise where the game falls short.

But starting with the gameplay, yeah it really is just a handheld version of Dead or Alive. But that’s all it needed to be. It’s not like it was billed as the next evolution of the series. It was marketed as Dead or Alive but portable. All they had to do was make sure the game was an accurate portrayal of the home console games and I would say they succeeded at that.

The gameplay is a solid rendition of Dead or Alive. It’s got everything from the console games. The expansive move lists, the combo system, the Triangle System, and the interactive stages are all here and accounted for. It plays just like Dead or Alive but now on the go.

Obviously, a lot of things had to be simplified. The stages are not as intricate or as expansive as the main games, and the Hold System has reverted to how it was in Dead or Alive 3 because this series cannot make up its goddamned mind. These changes do make sense though. This is meant for a more casual audience so simplifying the Holds makes sense to ease newcomers into it, and the stages are toned down due to technical limitations.

Of course, the stages won’t be as elaborate as the console games. The 3DS couldn’t handle that. Credit where it’s due though, the stages are still decently big and still have plenty of transitions. They may not be as elaborate as the console games, but they get pretty damn close at times.

While there are a couple of new stages, a lot of them are returning from previous games. This is meant to celebrate the series’ history after all; it makes sense to bring back some of the more iconic stages, and a lot of them are very close to the originals.

Not just from a gameplay perspective but from a visual perspective too. Dead or Alive Dimensions is a great looking game for the 3DS. The stages look nice and still have a lot of the same visual design and tone of the console games. They manage to keep a lot of the details while still toning it down for the less powerful system.

I do wish that some of the darker stages were brightened up a little though. It can be hard to see anything while playing on them due to the smaller screen. You’d lose some of the original atmosphere, but playability should always be the priority.

The character models also look great. They look very smooth and are very close to how they looked in the console games. Maybe not Dead or Alive 4 but compared to the early console games it holds up nicely. They’re well animated too. While the graphical fidelity isn’t as good as the console games, the animations are on point.

For an early game on the console, it was a bit of a showpiece for the hardware. The 3D effect is used pretty well, though I never used this much. It hurts my eyes after a few minutes, and it cuts the frame rate. Without 3D it runs great, a smooth 60 fps, but cuts to 30 when played in 3D. Still perfectly playable, but you got to have that smooth 60. It just feels better.

Still the fact it runs as a stable 60 is impressive for a 3DS game. say what you want about Team Ninja, but they always get the most out of whatever hardware they work on. The game sounds pretty good too. The sound effects are nice and crunchy, sound design helps make every hit feel satisfying, and the music is good, mainly because a lot of it is reused from previous Dead or Alive games.

No licensed music sadly. The days of Aerosmith rocking out in the intros and endings are behind us unfortunately. The sad thing is the game uses some of the older cutscenes and they just don’t hit the same. The new music isn’t bad, but you can’t beat Aerosmith. Though let’s be honest what can.

One major addition to sound was the English dub. Ok technically this was something in Dead or Alive 2 on PS2, but that was a one off. This is the first time it became a regular feature. Unlike Dead or Alive 2 though, the acting here is good. Mainly because they got some big-name voice actors for the roles.

Kari Wahlgren, Wendee Lee, Yuri Lowenthal, Troy Baker, April Stewart, Kate Higgins and Khary Payton are just some of the names here. Those are all big-name voice actors that are some of the best in the business, and Troy Baker is also here. Getting those names was a big get for the series.

All that said, the voice direction is a bit awkward at times. The game sometimes feel like dialogue is rushed to match the Japanese timing and it makes some exchanges feel off. Still, it’s a good dub for what it is. For a handheld spinoff they put a lot of effort into the presentation.

There really isn’t a lot to talk about regarding the gameplay. As I went over it’s pretty close to the main games in terms of mechanics and overall game feel. It doesn’t introduce anything new because, well, it’s a spin off and not the next mainline game.

It still plays great though. As far as a handheld Dead or Alive goes it’s about as perfect as you could get at the time. But there isn’t much new, meaning there isn’t much reason to go over it. All I can say is, it’s Dead or Alive, it’s on a handheld, and it plays really well.

There is one thing worth mentioning though and that’s how the game handles the dual screen set-up. All the action takes place on the top screen to take advantage of that 3D gimmick, while the bottom screen is used for either fight data, which you’ll never use so I don’t know why they bothered, and to display the character move lists.

You can scroll through the list during a match and tapping the move on the touch screen will use the move automatically. As useful tool, but with how big the move sets are it’s a bit cumbersome to use. Street Fighter 4 on 3DS did something similar but that game had much smaller move sets, so it made more sense to do it there.

The move sets will also automatically highlight a move when you use it normally, so the list can change on a dime. You can lock it in place though, and it will stay in that place until you manually change it. Even across multiple matches. So if there’s a move or combo you have trouble using you can just keep that on screen and use it via touchscreen.

It’s not the most ideal use of the touch screen, but it’s something. I only wish that you could pause the game and scroll through the list. It would make it a lot less cumbersome. Or just let me make my own list, that would make a lot more sense. It’s a neat feature but it wasn’t implemented very well.

In terms of content, this is where the problems start. Before I get into all that though let’s talk about what the game does well in what it offers.

Since this is a compilation game it features some returning stages from previous games along with new stages. There aren’t many new stages unfortunately. There are sixteen stages total and only two of them are new. They are good stages though. One of them is on a massive cruise liner which is a fun setting, and the other is from Metroid.

Yeah, there’s a Metroid stage in this game. Because Team Ninja had just made Metroid Other M and they wanted some cross synergy with that title. Since the stage, the Geothermal Power Plant, comes from that game. They could have picked a better game to do that with, but we play the hand we’re dealt.

. It’s a cool crossover. Not as cool as the Halo one since there’s no playable guest character, Samus would have been so cool, but it’s neat. The stage looks really good, and while it doesn’t have any transitions, it does have Ridley as a stage hazard. So we can at least say something good came from Metroid Other M.

As for the roster, every fighter from the previous games return. That includes the bosses like Raidou, Tengu, Genra/Omega and Alpha 152. The latter two of which were previously never playable so that’s pretty cool.

It even features the Kasumi clone from Dead or Alive 2 as a separate character called Kasumi Alpha who is essentially a throwback character. Having Kasumi’s move set from Dead or Alive 2. Just like how Mortal Kombat Trilogy had classic versions of some characters with their older move sets.

There’s even a brand-new character with Shiden. He’s Kasumi and Hayate’s dad who makes his first and so far, only playable appearance in this. He’s essentially just a stripped-down Hayate and he’s treated more as a secret character than a main one since you need to use a code to select him. Still, he’s a cool little bonus.

All that gives us a roster of twenty-six playable characters. That’s a good-sized roster, especially for a handheld spin-off. In fact, it has the largest roster so far. Now, you don’t start with every character or stage. You need to unlock most of them which leads me into the bulk of the games content, the modes.

There’s a lot of modes in this game but most of them aren’t worth talking about in depth. Free Play is just a single fight with a computer, and Training is just a practice mode. They’re both pretty standard. Although Training sadly doesn’t have the Sparring feature that took you through each characters move set. Which is a bummer.

Local Play is just the multiplayer. Letting you play matches locally with friends. Good luck finding a player with a 3DS and a copy of this game in 2025 though. Showcase simply lets you view figurines, which are the character models in different poses. You unlock these by playing the game and there’s a lot of them to get. So that adds some replay value to the game.

You can also take pictures of them and view them in the 3D Photo Album. It’s fine I guess, a cute prototype of the photo mode every game has now, but it is pretty limited. It’s a neat little bonus, even if it did get the game banned in Sweden because of all the upskirt shots you could take of the underage characters. Goddamn it Japan.

Then there are the modes that are functionally useless, Internet Play and Showdown. The former doesn’t work anymore because the 3DS internet has long been shut down, and I doubt the player base was that big in the first place, so it was probably useless back then too. Showdown does work still, but it’s tied to the 3DS’ StreetPass feature, and the chances of you running into another3DS in the wild with a copy of this game is rarer than leprechaun gold.

But ok, let’s finally talk about the actual main modes. The ones that are worth talking about. There are four main modes in the game, Chronicle, Arcade, Survival, and Tag Challenge. Most of these are returning from previous games, and not just this series but just other fighter in general. So not much new unfortunately.

The most interesting mode is Chronicle. This is the games main story mode, but unlike the past games where Story Mode was just an arcade ladder with cutscenes, Chronicle is a more akin to a cinematic story mode found in modern fighting games. This game came out the same year as Mortal Kombat 9 by the way, so I guess they were ahead of the curve on that one.

Speaking of Mortal Kombat 9, Chronicle is very similar to the story in that game. In that it acts as a retelling of the previous games, although it doesn’t have the time travel stuff it’s just a straight retelling. Probably for the best considering the mess Mortal Kombat became.

The game is split into chapters that each cover a game in the series. Starting with a brief prologue chapter covering the events leading up to the first game. And by that, I mean it starts with a tutorial and then just plays the opening from Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate.

They do that a lot. They’ll reuse or even recreate many of the scenes from previous games. I guess it makes sense because this is a compilation that is meant to pay homage to the series past, but it’s done very awkwardly. The scenes all come from different games that had varying CG quality. The CG cutscenes in Dead or Alive were always good quality, but CG has this thing where it ages rapidly.

You look at an early Pixar movie and compare it to a modern one and the animation quality is night and day. It’s not even close. Basically, you can tell which cutscenes came from earlier games and which ones came from later ones because the CG in the later games looks way better. Granted they are lower quality on the 3DS screen, but you can still see the difference.

Another issue is that the old cutscenes will clash with the new ones. Not visually, but story wise. See, Chronicle is a sort of attempt to try to make sense of Dead or Alive’s convoluted storyline. I made no secret that I think the story in these games is ridiculous and even completely nonsensical.

It’s some of the goofiest fighting game plot I’ve ever seen, and I’m a fan of Tekken and Mortal Kombat. So trust me, that says a lot. Seeing them trying to clean it up is great. it was in desperate need of a tidying up.

Of course back then I didn’t know that. I thought it was just a straight retelling of the series story. Now I see what they were trying to do, expand on the series storyline and try to make it make some kind of sense. But just because they tried doesn’t mean they succeeded.

Case in point. One of the bigger plot holes in this series was why Donovan went after Helena. While Helena was related to Fame Douglas the games made it appear like she didn’t care about him or DOATEC. So Donovan targeting her only made her get involved when she would have just lived her life and stayed uninvolved if he hadn’t. It made the main villain look like an idiot.

In Dimensions it’s retconned so that Helena did have something to do with her dad and took over the company after he died. Ok, now going after her actually makes sense. Except they kept the scene from Dead or Alive 3 where Helena said that DOATEC was her fathers and had nothing to do with her. Word for word it’s the same. Why keep that if you’re going to retcon her backstory. Now it makes it look like Helena has no clue what she wants.

The whole story is like this. They’ll retcon things but keep other things that contradict it. They also use Ryu Hayabusa a lot more in this story without really giving him more story importance. He’s still just the cool ninja guy who helps out. I know Ninja Gaiden was riding high at the time, but it just comes across as fan service. Which this series knows much about, so that tracks.

I will say that the does clean up some of the details in the series lore, like showing how exactly Hayate was kidnapped, but it creates new ones that raise more questions. Remember Tengu? That weirdo final boss in DOA 2 that had nothing to do with anything. Well they finally explain where he came from. Turns out Genra summoned him.

Why did Genra summon him? He was evil the whole time, when did that happen? Was he always working for DOATEC, was he kidnapped first, was he jealous of the clan leader, why is Genra evil now? They answered the Tengu question by raising further questions. Even when they try to make Tengu make sense, he still makes no fucking sense.

Ok, so the attempt at cleaning up the story wasn’t entirely successful. You could argue it failed spectacularly and only made it worse. But it could still work as a sort of definitive telling of the events of the games. Even the Dead or Alive wiki uses this story mode as the actual canonical events.

I guess if you view it as that, it’s fine, but the problem is Dead or Alive’s story is still a complete mess. It still has a lot of parts that don’t make sense, the villains still don’t do anything, and their plans and motivations make no fucking sense. The whole thing has so many leaps in logic even Mario couldn’t cross them.

If anything, Dimensions being the canon events makes certain parts worse. Like Hayate learning Karate. In the previous games the time frame of the events was never given, so we don’t know how long Hayate was with Hitomi’s family. I though he must have been there for a few months given he had learned the family martial art, but this game reveals it was only a few days.

How the fuck do you master karate in just a few days? I don’t care how good Hayate is at fighting, he ain’t learning it that fast. Especially since he was suffering amnesia. There’s being a prodigy at martial arts and then there’s being a Gary Stu. This is Gary Stu territory you’re in now. Even Batman took time to learn this stuff.

It also makes his relationship with Hitomi less interesting since they would have only known each other for a couple of days. So instead of two people getting to know each other and one falling in love, they come off as acquaintances and one just having a schoolgirl crush. It’s so lame now.

It makes the story of Dead or Alive feel much smaller knowing that a lot of this only took place over a couple of weeks. I know time frames are a big issue in fighting games, but at least in games like Tekken and Soulcalibur there was a few years between games, mostly it gets weird in the new games. At least that gives them breathing room to make events more believable.

Also, because Chronicle is focused on the main story it means that many of the side characters don’t get a lot to do, and a lot of their stories are never elaborated on. When I first played it I found it hard to follow because it would show all these other characters dealing with their own issues and never explained who they were or why I should care.

In short, I don’t think it does a good job of getting newcomers up to speed. They do try to keep with text boxes on the bottom screen to explain certain parts of the story, but even these don’t work that well.

Some of these are helpful, but a lot of them tell you stuff you can figure out just by playing the game, and some feel like they have nothing to do with anything. Why does it explain to me what a commodity is? I know what that is and it’s not a vital story component. Is it trying to be educational? I don’t get this.

Another problem is they’ll bring up a fight between certain characters only to then show them fight someone completely unrelated. It’s very awkward. Honestly it feels like they should have kept a lot of those scenes out. The side characters feel like they shouldn’t be here.

I think my biggest issue with it though is its structure. Chronicle has five chapters, the first four cover the events of each of the Dead or Alive games at the time from the ninja’s point of view, while chapter 5 covers it from Helena’s point of view. Sort of like how Dead or Alive 4 had Helena’s story mode at the end.

Except there it made sense because she was the main character, and it was meant to keep certain reveals a secret until the end. Here we already know about those reveals. Keeping them secret is pointless and doing it this way just drags the pacing down.

It makes the story events more confusing and also repetitive since a lot of scenes end up being repeated. Why not just show the events of the story in the proper order. It would have made it easier to follow.

I’ve been critical of it, but I don’t think Chronicle is a bad mode. Not completely anyway, and there are things I do like about it. It is nice to get some clarification of certain events, we actually get to see Fame and Donovan on screen even if Donovan is only barely shown, and it does elaborate on some of the series forgotten story elements like that whole Kasumi clone debacle.

There are even some scenes I outright love. The scene with Ayane and her mom was very well done, and I do like that they delved more into the familial aspects of the ninja’s. They clarify that they do know that Ayane is their half-sister where before it wasn’t entirely clear. It makes their interactions a bit more interesting knowing that.

But the story itself is still poor. The mode is fun for the two and a half hours it lasts but that’s because the gameplay is fun. The story is dreadful.

The presentation is also a bit inconsistent since some scenes are fully animated and some are done like diorama slide shows. But I’m guessing that was a budgetary thing and it does let them use the 3D more effectively so I’m not going to complain too much.

Chronicle is not a good story mode but calling it a story mode isn’t entirely accurate. It is a story mode since you play through the story of the game, but it also acts as a tutorial. They go through a lot of the game’s mechanics throughout the mode, and in that respect it does work.

I think it does a great job of explaining the ins and outs of the fighting system. In fact, after playing this, I now have a better understanding of the fighting system than I did playing the other games. Like counter throws, I had no clue about how they worked but now I do. It even covers things like how to properly take advantage of the game’s combo system. If you want something that covers the mechanics of Dead or Alive in a concise way, this is worth looking at.

I don’t know if the later games have something similar, but I will say that I think Chronicle fusing a tutorial and a story mode is a novel and logical idea. Think about it, what do most people do when they first play a fighting game. They either hit the story mode or play the tutorial. Well Dead or Alive does both at the same time and I find that to be a much more fun way of learning the game.

Chronicle may suck as a story mode but it’s a good tutorial at least. It’s also the mode where you’ll unlock most of the main stages and characters. It doesn't take long until you will have most of what you want, but the game still has plenty to unlock after it which is where the other modes come in.

Arcade, Survival and Tag Challenge are the other big single player modes, and I don’t think I need to explain how these work. Arcade is a simple ladder with a set of random opponents, Survival is a gauntlet where you try to survive as long as possible, and Tag Challenge is a tag team mode.

All of these were in previous games, but Dimensions does do them a little differently. Arcade mode is now split between six different courses which all have their own theme. The first has you fight through some of the male characters, and the rest are all themed after each of the games in the series. With you fighting through only characters from that game before facing each games final boss. The last ladder being you facing all the bosses and Kasumi Alpha for some reason.

Beating each course unlocks something new like a new character, and in the final course you get that Metroid stage. But you also unlock a new costume for each character every time you finish a run, though you can also get them from completing a Tag Challenge with any character.

There aren’t too many costumes thankfully, most characters have two unlockable costumes max, so it isn’t that time consuming to get them all. Still, it does give you a reason to come back to it, thankfully it isn’t too difficult to go through.

Quite the opposite actually. Arcade in Dead or Alive Dimensions is pretty goddamned easy. The AI is no problem at all and even at its hardest it only took me two attempts to beat these guys. Not that I’m complaining mind you. After suffering through Dead or Alive 4 this was a breath of fresh air.

Plus, this is a handheld spin-off aimed at a new audience. Making it difficult would only turn people off. Especially for a handheld fighter since a lot of those are made easier than their console counterparts. Probably because handhelds aren’t the comfiest to hold for fighting games.

The problem is that Arcade is woefully short. I beat every course in under 20 minutes. No joke, I clocked the whole thing in less than half an hour. Even with the unlockable costumes that still doesn’t give it much longevity, and honestly, I didn’t bother doing that because Arcade is very repetitive.

Every course is the same characters in the same order. Once you’ve played it once, you’ve seen everything it has to offer. There’s not a lot of reasons to go back to it. They could have at least added more rewards like, I don’t know, having the character endings from the previous games as unlockable. That would have been a great way to incorporate old content and give you an excuse to complete it with every character.

If you think I’m asking too much for this, there is precedent for that. Darkstalkers Chronicles on PSP, which was also a compilation of sorts, let you unlock all of the endings from the previous games. It even added the text back from the Night Warriors ending from the original Japanese version that had previously been cut.

If that game could do it, why couldn’t this one. Dimensions already used the endings as part of Chronicle. We know the 3DS can handle them. it would have added a lot more replay value, but no. So enjoy the 20 minutes, because that’s all you’ll get out of it.

To go back to costumes briefly, it’s worth mentioning there are more costumes in the game, but you can only get them via a download. I think they were paid DLC, but that option isn’t available due to the E-shop closing. They are still attainable through play coins so thankfully they aren’t lost media, but it will take time to get them all. I mean you could just mod your 3DS, that is remarkably easy to do.

The costumes themselves are all from past games. Again, keeping in line with this being a compilation game. I’m not going to talk about the fan service element since honestly there isn’t much to comment on. I mean it isn’t as bad as previous games.

Some of the outfits are skimpy but most are ok. It’s par for the course in this series. I sure hope the next game doesn’t go overboard and force me to talk about scummy business practices. Sure would hate it if it did that.

But let’s move on. Next is Survival and like Arcade this has different courses where you fight a different number of opponents. I only played this for a few courses because it’s pretty lame. It’s missing the item collection that made previous Survival modes interesting, and I don’t get why this mode needed different courses. Just have it be an endless gauntlet like every other survival.

You also don’t get much from doing it either. All you unlock are different system voices which just changes the announcer. It’s not a very interesting unlockable. This mode is a little lame I won’t lie, but it’s better than what’s coming next.

The last mode is the Tag Challenge mode. This is the games tag team mode, and it sucks. I don’t know they fucked this up, but good god did they find a way. First off, this is the only mode that has a tag team. In other Dead or Alive games you could do tag team in other modes like Survival and VS but here you can only do it in this mode.

Second you only control one character at a time. The second character is controlled by the computer which means you are dependent on an AI partner to help you. An AI partner that has a bad habit of tagging in when you don’t want them too.

Now, not having full control is bad enough, but the AI is absolutely useless. It can’t combo properly, it doesn’t do holds, it won’t throw, it’s worthless. On occasion it will do something, but for the most part it will just stand there and get its ass kicked. It’s only useful as a meat shield while you heal up. Imagine fighting with a dead weight around you and you have an idea of what this is like.

The worst part is the opponent AI is much better. Meaning you have a crappy AI partner fighting a somewhat competent AI partner. It’s like having a double team chess match against a mathematician and a physicist while you’re stuck with a five-year-old. Who thought this was a good idea.

The whole point of a Tag Team mode is controlling two characters at once, but this game doesn’t let you do that. You can play it in co-op, but I don’t have anyone to play this with me. So I’m stuck with the dumb computer.

You may think this isn’t as bad as I’m making it out. I mean the AI in the other modes wasn’t that hard. It can’t be that bad here, right? Yeah, about that, Tag Challenge is far harder than the other modes and it’s not for the right reason.

Here’s the thing, Tag Challenge isn’t hard because of the AI. That’s part of it, but it’s a pretty small part. The main reason is how it handles damage scaling. The idea of Tag Challenge is that it’s basically a set of missions with escalating difficulty. But it seems the only way the designers could add more difficulty was to simply have the enemies take less damage.

So instead of the opponents getting harder, they just become massive damage sponges while you take the same amount of damage. Your combos and throws do very little, while they can annihilate half of yours in one combo.

Does that sound fun? No, it’s tedious as hell. It takes forever to kill these guys. Not because they’re particularly challenging, but because they take so much damage. I could sort of understand it in the fights where you fight one character, but it does it even in two vs two matches. Why would you do that? it makes no sense.

So, to summarise, you are fighting against an AI that can hit you for good damage, you can barely do anything in return, and you’re fighting with a braindead AI that is nowhere near as good as the AI you’re fighting against, and you have no control over when you’ll tag out.

This is bullshit! It is not a fair challenge; it is in fact the opposite of a fair challenge. I have never seen a fighting game that stacks the deck so far against you all for the sake of difficulty. Oh, it is difficult all right, but for all the wrong fucking reasons.

The only way I could get through some of these was to get some damage in until I was at half health, that’s when the AI will swap in, wait until I heal up and see if they do damage, swap out when fully healed, try to deal damage and stall until the partner was healed, repeat until opponent is dead.

It is the most unfun strategy you can do, but it’s the only one that worked consistently. The only respite is that the opponent doesn’t heal even when tagged out. So, you can just lame it out. Is this even a proper Tag Mode? You can’t control the tagging, there’s no tag combo’s, the only thing that stayed were the tag throws and even those are impossible to pull off. They really dropped the ball here.

You know, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Mission Modes in fighting games. I find them interesting but also a little unfair at times, but I take every bad thing I said about them back. No matter how unfair those got they were never as bad as this.

At least a mode like Weapon Master has creative mission ideas and gimmicks to add challenge to it. it didn’t always work, but at least it was inventive and tested you in different ways. Dimensions only tests your patience. There’s no creativity, it’s just fighting characters with the damage scaling all messed up. It’s horrendously lazy.

I don’t know, maybe this was supposed to be a more traditional mission mode, but this was all they could do with the time they had. But if so, I’d rather they hadn’t bothered. This mode is so annoying as is that I’d rather the game be without it. I would rather the game have less content than to have it at all. That’s how much it infuriated me.

It’s obvious they couldn’t implement Tag Mode properly. The hardware probably couldn’t handle it and if so, that’s fine. You don’t need to have this. Yes, it’s a staple feature but if technical limitations prevent its inclusion, just don’t have it. We would understand. No Tag Mode is preferrable to a half assed one.

I didn’t even finish this. I made it to mission 18 of 20, but that mission was so aggravating that I just gave up. Omega is impossible with all his projectiles and the low damage you do that I just couldn’t take it anymore. Sadly I never got to play as Omega or Alpha 152 or Shiden because Tag Challenge pissed me off too much.

I was going to finish it. I wanted to, but while I was pounding my head on the wall while trying to beat Omega, something dawned on me. This was my exact thought process while I was going through it.

“Why am I doing this? Why am I struggling with something I hate so much? To unlock the last few characters, do I need them? I mean it would be fun to see what they’re like, but would I play them much. Am I going to play this game long enough to justify the time and effort I’m putting in to unlock them.

Probably not. I don’t even know if I’m going to play this after the review. What am I going to do, play with other people. I can’t play this game with other people anymore. No one plays 3DS anymore and if they do they aren’t playing this. Why am I even bothering with this? What’s the point?!”

And then it finally clicked, there is no point. I’m not going to play this after unlocking the last characters. Even if I do push myself to complete it there’s nothing to play after doing so.  Which is Dead or Alive Dimensions biggest flaw. There isn’t much here to go back to.

Look, Dead or Alive Dimensions is not a bad game. As a handheld version of Dead or Alive it’s great. It looks the part, it plays the part, it sounds the part, and it even jiggles the part. As a handheld rendition of a fighting game, it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen from a gameplay perspective. I’d put it up there with Dark Resurrection on a pure gameplay front.

But everything else just doesn’t hold up. The game just doesn’t have the content or longevity to last. Most of the modes either don’t work anymore, are complete throwaways, or are over before you know it.

Chronicle is ok, but it’s a narrative mess and it only lasts for a few hours. Arcade is fun but it’s over in 20 minutes and is too repetitive. Survival is, well it is what it is, and I hate Tag Challenge with a passion. There’s nothing in this game to make you want to return. Chronicle is the only mode it has going for it and that has more issues than Action Comics.

There’s some original stuff that’s cool like the Metroid stage and having the bosses be playable, but the latter is a pain to unlock and the former just isn’t enough. Two new stages is not a selling point.

You want to know the reason I played Dark Resurrection so much. It wasn’t just because it was a solid handheld rendition of Tekken 5, but because of all the content it had. It had nearly all the content of the console game plus a lot of its own. It had a ton to do, and I would go back to it constantly.

Dead or Alive Dimensions doesn’t. The gameplay and presentation are both fantastic, but there’s no content to make you want to keep playing. You can get most of what the game has to offer in a weekend. I did almost get everything in a weekend and would have if Tag Challenge hadn’t been a bastard.

And once you’re done, you’re done. The modes have no replay value and without the multiplayer there’s no reason to boot it up again. I didn’t like Dead or Alive 4 but at least I can see myself playing it with friends.

So, is Dead or Alive Dimensions worth checking out. I suppose if you’re a Dead or Alive fan and you want to see how the series fares on a handheld then it might be worth it as a curiosity. As a weird little chapter in the series history, it is a fun little novelty.

Aside from that, not really. I hate that I feel this way too because I do like the game. I would say it’s the best traditional fighting game on 3DS, which admittedly isn’t saying that much but it is something at least. It is a good handheld fighter; it just lacks the content and longevity that the great ones have. It’s a good game in a mediocre package.

Next time we’ll be returning to the main titles with Dead or Alive 5. The biggest game in the series yet, even if it made some questionable business decisions. VERY questionable decisions.