‘Dead Or Alive Xtreme’ Bounces Back With Third Game

Zack Island, the exotic island resort that Zack has built up twice in the past, has been destroyed yet again. Zack has rebuilt his paradise once more in Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, but this time appoints you, the player, to be the interim owner of the island, as he’s “busy working on another super important job.” Your goal is to guide one of several ladies through a two-week vacation on the island, and have her experience be as enjoyable as possible.

You’ll begin Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 by choosing from one of nine lovely ladies to play as and focus on. The roster includes nine characters from the DOA series: Marie Rose, Honoka, Kasumi, Ayane, Kokoro, Nyotengu, Hitomi, Momiji, and Helena. After you’ve made your selection, you’ll get a brief intro cutscene, at the end of which you’ll meet another one of the ladies who will request to partner up with you. You can choose to accept her request, or deny it in hopes of pairing up with another girl. After this, you’ll have access to two different game modes that you will be switching between during your two week stay on Zack Island, named “Girl Mode” and “Owner Mode.”

Girl Mode is the mode you’ll likely spend the most of your time with during each playthrough. In this mode you’ll be able to play one of the six mini-games offered on the island, buy swimsuits and other various items to keep for yourself or gift to one of the other girls on the island, or simply relax for a bit at a location of your choice.

The six mini-games include five games featured in the previous installment, and one brand new activity. Volleyball, the game’s trademark activity, is the deepest and most enjoyable of the minigames. The basic strategy of the game revolves around watching both your opponent’s movement and the ball at the same time, and choosing the type and direction of your hit based upon your opponent’s actions and positioning. It can be a bit challenging at first, but after some practice, you’ll likely find yourself defeating even the harder difficulty opponents the majority of the time.

Butt battle and tug-of-war return from DOAX2. These two mini-games are fairly similar, and are both essentially rock-paper-scissors type games. You’ll choose from a few different actions based upon what you anticipate your opponent will do, as you attempt to bump or pull her off a platform and into the pool. The flag race returns as well, which simply involves mashing a button as quickly as possible to run, and pressing another button to dive for the flag at the end.

The returning pool hopping race, and new rock climbing activity are both QTE-style events. In both mini-games, you’ll need to press the button on your controller that matches the on-screen prompt in order to advance to the end of the course. At the end of each day of the vacation, you may also go the casino and try to win some extra money before the next day begins. The casino’s three games — blackjack, poker, and roulette — are all played by the same rules as their real-life counterparts.

‘Owner’ refers to the island, dummy
In Owner Mode, you’ll be able to buy swimsuits and other items to gift to any of the girls on the island, and take photos of the girls relaxing or participating in any of the activities. The in-game camera is quite nice, as you’ll be able to freely move the camera around the location, and zoom and tilt the camera in any position you’d like. It even has an F-stop function, which allows you to control the depth of field of your photo. This allows for some interesting and creative photos.

So how do you go about making your girl’s vacation as enjoyable as possible? Playing and winning any of the mini-games will raise a girl’s satisfaction level, which is measured in-game by a scale of one to four hearts. As the owner, you can also gift items to the girl you’ve selected, which will raise her satisfaction level based on how much she likes that particular item.

You’ll also receive missions from Zack throughout your vacation. There are missions for doing just about any activity in the game, such as playing and winning a specific mini-game, and purchasing and gifting specific items. Completing these missions will give both a boost to your girl’s satisfaction level, as well as the owner level, which will unlock different items and modes as it goes higher. During each vacation, you’ll also receive several missions specific to that girl only. Completing all of these missions is required to achieve the highest possible rating for your vacation, which will unlock a character specific ending cutscene if achieved.

Breast physics returns
Graphically, the game looks quite nice overall. The character models are generally well done and are quite visually appealing. Developer Team Ninja’s graphic engine, dubbed Soft Engine 2.0, gives the girls soft and realistic looking skin textures, realistic clothing wetness, and some nice jiggling effects for the appropriate parts of their bodies. The girls can also get tan lines as you progress through the vacation and change into different outfits, which is a nice little detail.

Unfortunately, there are a number of gripes I have with the game. The first is the size of the roster. I would have liked to see at least a couple more characters in the game. In particular, the omission of series mainstays Leifang and Tina was disappointing, and it makes me wonder if Team Ninja is holding back to sell us DLC down the road.

The game just seems to be very lacking in content overall. The jet ski races, water slide, and slot machines from the previous installment are nowhere to be found. The minigames that are present get boring fairly quickly. Volleyball is fun for a while, but even that began to feel stale after running through the game with about half of the cast. Online multiplayer would have given the game more lasting appeal, but sadly the game is single-player mode only.

The Dead or Alive Xtreme series proves to be unabashedly gratuitous as ever with its latest installment. Although the game is light on content, it provides a unique experience that can’t really be found in any other console game, and thus caters to a somewhat niche audience with some success. If you think the visual appeal and risque nature of the game will be enough to give you a satisfactory amount of enjoyment, perhaps the game is worth importing. Otherwise, you may want to pass on this game, as Team Ninja hasn’t done much to build upon the formula they’ve used since the original game first released.