Then, team-specific endings (made up of stills and text chatter) last longer than all preceding dialogue combined. The “story” here is done in the traditional arcade mode of old, dressed up with three cinematics and the same sequences for every character no matter their place in the plot. When you compare KOF XV to its greatest rivals - mainly recent Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games - the scripting falls flat. Alternate dimensions rip open, and a sold-out crowd watching the finale still thinks they’re somehow safe being near this tournament location. What was once about overthrowing corrupt organizers like Geese Howard has become an exercise in absurdist fantasy. The boldness with which KOF XV descends into unintelligible anime nonsense is almost admirable. Reviewed on PlayStation 4 (code provided by the publisher).SNK has built a branded fighting game universe, for better or for worse. Dead or Alive 6 will definitely please franchise fans and the fighting game community would be wise to give the game a serious look, but if you're on the fence, perhaps stay there until they release an ultimate edition or you know what the future DLC roadmap will look like. But in a world where DoA5 is similar and packs more content, it's not as easy recommending it to owners of the previous game. It is a great fighting game, with the usual rubbish story and excellent gameplay mechanics. The smaller roster here leaves room for DLC, which DoA5 had loads of, but that's not exactly an excuse for the light roster now, especially when at launch the game has two characters already available for purchase. With Dead or Alive 6 though, well, it still looks a lot like Dead or Alive 5, and when it's asking to buy DLC for the likes or Nyotengu and Phase 4 - characters already available in DoA5 - it feels a bit cheeky. It would've been difficult for Capcom to take the entirety of Street Fighter 4's cast and put them in Street Fighter V, for instance, with a new game engine and art style. When fighting games change drastically, it makes sense for the roster to change. The biggest problem with the overall package for me is the character roster. It works well and is fun to pull out in battle. Mashing away at it will perform a basic four-hit Fatal Rush, ending in a special attack that uses the Break Gauge, DoA 6's new special meter. The Special button seems to help newer players too. The fact that there's only a single button for each Punch and Kick also means that you know exactly which buttons you'll need to mash to get a quick and dirty. It all adds up to solid core fighting mechanics that are fairly easily explained, but have deep and nuanced uses in battle.

Critical counters can stun foes too, allowing you to extend combos even further. In addition to that, of course, you get the usual mix of punching and kicking combos, with each of the eight directions resulting in a new attack. Make no mistake, it works well and pulling it off online against other fighters is endlessly satisfying, and will help you put predictable online foes in their place. The 4-way Hold mechanic is this game's bread and butter which separates it from every other fighting game on the market, and it feels good. If, again, a bit similar to Dead or Alive 5. Instead, it's all about the combat and some fighting action, and to that end, Dead or Alive 6 is great.

Nor the titillation - that's Dead or Alive Extreme. Luckily most players don't come to Dead or Alive for the story. You see Zack recruiting for the next DoA tournament, multiple fighters gearing up, and the ninjas are of course preparing to save the world from some evil on the horizon. They are rote and the whole mode feels arbitrary, like it just needed a story mode, regardless of whether it was interesting. You can skip to the latest new chapters with R2, which is good because it's necessary, otherwise half the game would be spent trying to understand this accursed menu.Įach story chapter plays out as you'd expect, a brief cutscene, a fight, and a cutscene to finish. Sounds fine, but the camera is absurdly zoomed in, and you won't even be able to see which story chapters are next at a glance.

It's set on a weird grid, where each vertical row is a character, and from top to bottom, it shows you story chapters in chronological order. You'll be playing as the whole cast, going through short story segments for each one. It's a shame, but casual players just won't find that much here to keep them invested in the game.Īnd the story mode here is, well, disjointed is a start, though it's not too unusual for Dead or Alive standards. But that's not to say there aren't new mechanics or reasons to get into Dead or Alive 6, but know this in advance: more casual fighting game players might enjoy the game's somewhat disjointed story mode, but it's not worth investing in over Dead or Alive 5 if that's all you're here for.

Dead or alive 6 king of fighters