Monday, April 2, 2012

Dead or Alive 5: Director talks alpha demo


Fans who purchased Ninja Gaiden 3 have access to the Dead or Alive 5 (DoA 5) demo. What fans may not realize are the bevy of details surrounding the alpha demo.

From the A.I. to the cliffhanger, difficulty, and options, there are a ton of features for the demo. Team Ninja is still looking for feedback as well to make sure DoA 5 has a smooth release.

The game's director, Yohei Shimbori, took to Twitter to go into detail on moves, training options, and more regarding the demo. See what he had to say below:


"Hi everyone. I’m Yohei Shimbori, and I’m the director for DOA5. I love fighting games, and I’ve been working on DOA ever since I joined Tecmo. As director, I am responsible for deciding the game specs and direction for creating fighting entertainment. “Fighting entertainment” for us means something that pro fighters and casual gamers can enjoy. Moving forward, I’ll be sharing info about the game system and other details. …When I get a break from development, that is.

Today I’m going to explain a few features of the DOA5 Alpha Demo. First off, the Move List and Move Details are back. People really seemed to like them in DOAD. You can turn them on or off through the pause menu or options menu. You can use the right stick to scroll the Move List and push it in to perform the move.

Another feature of the demo is the prototype of a new AI system. The more you win, the stronger it gets. Eventually, it will reach just the right difficulty. We want newcomers to have fun with the action, so it starts out set fairly low. But once it gets strong, it’ll show off some of the awesome combos advanced users can do. So keep fighting!

I also want to focus on game options, so everyone can have fun with DOA5 however they want. You can change hit effects and camera types in the Options menu. Definitely try tweaking settings to how you want to play. Oh, and the slowdown that happens while tutorial messages are displayed? You can turn that off in the Options menu too. If you already know how to play, I’d suggest turning that off for the best experience. You can’t save in the demo, but the final game will save all your options, opponent AI, fight data, etc.

Lets talk Cliffhangers. Cliffhangers involve a changeup in the gameplay. It’s a quick, limited-time challenge. It’s like jumping over obstacles in DOA4, but you don’t choose between a mid P or K. Since your opponent is grabbing the ledge, you choose between a strike or throw, but in order to make it a psychological game, we’re balancing all the values mathematically based on game theory. Cliffhangers will only appear in certain stages, so they’ll be pretty rare if you choose a stage randomly. There’s definitely still room for tweaking things, so please speak up if you have any thoughts!"