My DOA5U arrived this week, complete with retailer bonus DLC code for a bunch of costumes. It’s really just a standalone upgrade pack for the original, and presumably so they can drive more costume sales which have been a lucrative business since DOA5 came out. I’m as guilty as anyone for this, I bought several of them.
There’s a couple of extra characters and some new arenas, and it lets you carry forward your game save and DLC from the previous title, so given the price it’s a reasonable upgrade for existing players as well as new ones. However, for people who didn’t have everything, the marketplace list is a minefield of various packs and individual outfits. Since you don’t know which actual costume each is in the marketplace it’s impossible to know what you’re missing. I suspect this is not entirely unintentional, because there’s a great big £26.99 rollup DLC pack with all the DOA5 costumes. I worked out that if I went for the pick and choose method, I could easily rack up over that by buying things I already had before by accident. In the end, I just bought the big pack – suddenly the game isn’t quite as well priced. There are already two new packs just for DOA5U too, so you can expect to spend upwards of £70 if you want all the content.
Aside from that it’s business as usual – I’m of the opinion that the game has been derided with breast jokes for far too long, DOA5U is another iteration of what has become a really excellent fighting game, so much so that this one will actually be getting an arcade port, and it’s been a while since the series has been played outside of the home. Everything just flows, it looks fantastic, it feels good to play. I understand hardcore fighting fans are still generally not into it, all I can say is – your loss.
Made a quick video tonight, I’m a really terrible player, and rusty at that. I’ve been playing through arcade mode to try to refresh myself on the general controls with my favourite character, Helena. While I was getting my ass handed to me by champ difficulty, someone issued an online challenge – these just pop up in the bottom right and you can accept by hitting the back button. It started as badly as I’d expected, with them nearly getting a perfect against me, but then – I got lucky. I’m not going to pretend it was skill, I remembered a few moves and they really lost their groove, and I picked up my first online win.
