Video game review number two hundred and eighty in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Dead or Alive Paradise"
I've always enjoyed a good Dead or Alive fighting game. The first one I ever played was on the Playstation 2, but the first one I actually owned was DOA3 for the original Xbox (I bought it on launch night). I remember playing it for the first time in the line for the original Xbox at the EB Games in Redmond. They had free pizza for everyone who showed up (and there were a lot of us). The news was there, and there was a big kiosk outside where you could play DOA3 against other folks waiting in line. I didn't actually have the game pre-ordered, but after playing it for awhile in line...I decided to add it on.
I spent a bunch of time with DOA3 and if asked, I would say that the fighting was only "ok"...but the graphics were awesome. Beautiful environments and beautiful characters made for a game that was as fun to play as it was to watch. Also, it was the only game I can think of that had an adjustable setting for how much you wanted the girls boobs to bounce. More on that later.
A couple of years later, a different kind of DOA game came out. Apparently, it was going to star the girls from the fighting game...only they weren't fighting anymore. Instead, they were hanging out on an island, playing volleyball, laying by the pool, and going to casinos at night. It sounded pretty strange...but as a fan of the previous games so far, I had to try it.
It sucked out loud.
Later, a sequel was released on the Xbox 360. Even though I wasn't a fan of the original volleyball game, I still tried it...and it also sucked. Out loud.
That brings me to today. I rented this lovely game from Gamefly, assuming it was the latest sequel in the DOA Volleyball experience. I figured it would be worth a try, and that surely, in 7 years they must have improved the formula. Oh how wrong I was.
This game is simply a port of the Xbox 360 version from 4 years ago, except they've actually stripped some features out. All that's left is a game where you basically play dress up with a bunch of digital dolls. I'm really not sure who this game is marketed at ( maybe guys who really love boobs and don't have Google?). Either way, it's pretty pathetic.
For the sake of this review, I played through several "days" in the game anyway.
The game opens with a cut scene that pans (slowly) over the beautiful digital boobies of all of the characters in the game. The opening cinema is several minutes of the girls running on the beach, with close-ups galore of their awesome breasts. The camera man zooms in tight so you can get a long look at their wet bathing suits, to the point where you almost feel a bit guilty for watching. I mentioned the "bounce" factor earlier, and it seems to be turned up all the way this time. I've been to many beaches, but I've never seen girls boobs bounce this way in real life.
For all the focus they put on the body parts, there's not much nudity, except for a few shots from the back of characters getting dressed or swimming topless....and one wonders why they don't just have the girls be all the way naked. After all, I'm pretty sure that the only goal in this game is to ogle the girls, so why not do it right?
Anyway, there's no plot to speak of (you arrive on the island, and you start playing games). One of the other girls tells you that Zack (the guy who runs the island) doesn't allow any other guys there (which seems kind of creep), but your character laughs it off and then you take a tour of all the facilities. You see the shop (where you can buy swimsuits), the pool (where you can sunbathe or play mini-games), the casino, and finally...several beaches. I went to the beach and played the horrible volleyball game. It's by far the worst version of volleyball I have ever played. In fact, it might be one of the worst sports game I've ever played.
After a day of volleyball, I had my character go to sleep, then wake up and try the horrible float jumping pool game. You play this one by pressing buttons to jump across the pool (stepping on several floats along the way) and trying not to fall in. It's difficult, it's not fun, and the computer beats you most of the time.
Next, I moved on to the horrible casino games. Table games are incredibly hard (the computer always seems to win no matter how good your hand is) but at least the slot machines are incredibly easy. It seems that if you play each machine around ten times, you'll win a decent jackpot, and receive nearly 30 times your bet as a payoff. Not bad if you want to stock up on cash, but it's kind of boring to play over and over again.
Eventually, you'll earn enough in-game cash to buy your girl a new swimsuit, and then she'll dance around in it, while you take pictures of her awesome digital rack. You can save these pictures....and I've actually got one on my PSP background now. That was kind of a cool feature.
Basically, this is the entire game. You repeat the tasks I've summarized above until you've earned enough money to buy all the skimpy swimsuits and clothes for every female character in the game. Once they have all their outfits and presents, that's the end.
Overall Score? 3/10. This is a half-assed PSP port of what was already a pretty terrible Xbox game. On top of that, they also managed to cut out one of the interesting parts of the original game (the jetski levels). I'm not saying that would have made this game better, but it would have been more complete. Truth be told, DOA Extreme 2 on the 360 is one of the few games I actually erased from my gamer profile after I played it for only a couple of hours and realized there was no way I'd ever get an achievement in it.
Luckily, the PSP has no gamer profile, so other than this review...no one will ever know I played this piece of shit. The only reason that I'm giving this game a three instead of a zero is because it has awesome graphics, and it's fun to look at for about 5 minutes. It might earn a higher score if you were someone who really wanted to stare at some boobies...and you were stranded somewhere with only a PSP to do that with. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy a game like this....and somewhere out there, I'm sure that one person is probably happy that they can bring this game wherever they go now.
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