When Halloween approaches, people tend to start talking about scary video games. So I’m going to talk about a video game that has the scariest creatures on Earth! Women! Just joking! Just joking! Women aren’t scary! Some of the nicest people I know are women. But the real scary question is “WHY on Earth would Cary play such a game?” That’s not normally the kind of games I usually play. So read on to find out why, and stick around for a silly review of it, plus a TRULY scary game!

Dead or Alive is a series of 3-D fighting games by Tecmo. One of the things that DOA games are known for are the overly sexy female characters. Tecmo decided to capitalize on that aspect by making a couple of games featuring the female DOA characters on vacation playing volleyball and other beach related activities. Yes there are more than one of these games, I actually played the sequel here. Needless to say, gameplay was NOT the focus of these titles. I’ll leave the focus to your imagination.

So why did I play it? Was it to ogle at fake female anatomies? No, but I bet I won’t be able to convince everyone of that. The reason why I played it was this: I’ve been reviewing games for more than ten years now, and most of the time I get to review the kinds of games I like to play: colorful and cheerful family-friendly fare. You know, like Kirby. And 99.9 percent of the time, I’m perfectly happy with that! But because of that, my gaming exposure is pretty limited. What gives me the right to talk about violence and suggestive themes in video games if I don’t know what else is out there? So every now and then, I try to expand my horizons and try a game I wouldn’t normally play. You know, just to try and make myself be a better and more well-rounded game reviewer. So when I saw DOAX2 for less than ten bucks, I decided to pick it up and try it for that reason. I actually did the same thing about a year ago with Rumble Roses XX and wrote a silly blog about it. This is kind of a sequel to that blog.

But before we get started with the gameplay of DOAX2, let me introduce you to the characters in it. But be warned, I know NOTHING about Dead or Alive games and its characters, so these ‘bio’s’ are just me looking at the pictures and descriptions in the instructions. Dead or Alive fans, feel free to chastise me for doing this, as I probably deserve it.

Kasumi
I think she’s supposed to be the main character of these games because you see her a lot. She has very red hair. She’s also supposed to be a ninja, I guess. Being a ninja nets you some automatic cool points, unless you’re Naruto. I hate to admit it, but I did once see some official artwork from Tecmo where Kasumi was in a Santa suit, and I thought that was kind of adorable in a silly way.

Ayane
I think she’s supposed to be a ninja, too. She also has purple hair, which gives her double cool points. For some strange reason, I’m fascinated by video game and anime characters with oddly colored hair. I don’t know why, though.

Christie
She has white hair, which is kind of cool. Not as cool as purple hair, though.

Hitomi
According to her little bio in the instructions, she’s from Germany. Yeah, Hitomi’s a pretty German sounding name, don’t you think? I should know, I took German in high school and college. (yes I am being silly)

Lei Fang
She has brown hair. And…uh, that’s it. I swear, at least the Rumble Roses characters were goofy enough for me to adequately make fun of them. These Dead or Alive ladies aren’t giving me any material here!

Kokoro
To me, Kokoro looks exactly like Lei Fang. I mean, seriously, if you put them next to each other, I couldn’t tell you who was who. That’s one of the reasons why the female Soul Calibur characters are better because they have different body frames and types. All the Dead or Alive characters look like they have the same body, just different heads.

Helena
I’ve never played a DOA game before, but did you know I actually have a favorite DOA character? And this one’s it! So why is that? Well, according to their bios, most of these characters are ninjas, karate masters, or wrestlers. Which is pretty typical of a fighting game. But Helena is an opera singer! I think that’s kind of cool and unusual. Though I imagine it takes a lot of stamina to perform on an opera stage like that, so maybe opera singers can be good fighters, too. I think Helena should have a sing attack where a big music note comes out of her mouth and hits the other player. And everyone reading this is probably glad I’m not making video games! And ya gotta love Helena’s fake French accent. I swear, the pink blobs in Loco Roco have better French accents than her!

Wanna know a secret? I secretly want to see a REAL opera. Why? Just to see what they’re like. A lot of people say opera is boring, but how can I make that assumption if I’ve never been to one. So someday, I’m going to see an opera! Somehow. I hope I get to see a good opera, though, with lots of swordfights and women in Viking helmets!

Tina
To me, Tina looks a lot like Helena without the big ol’ bow in her hair. According to the bio, she’s an American wrestler.

Lisa
She just looks like a regular dark skinned woman in a swimsuit. Playing as Helena, she was paired up with me in the game for some reason.

Zack & Niki
When I first saw their names in the instructions, I didn’t look carefully enough and I thought it said Zack & Wiki. And then I was like, “HOLY CRAP! ZACK & WIKI ARE IN THIS GAME??? DOAX2 JUST GOT ABOUT 100 TIMES BETTER!” But nope, Zack owns the island in this game and Niki is his girlfriend. They’re actually pretty silly and cartoony in the intro. Man, I wish I had my own island. It would have a big arcade and a real life Namco Museum! If Tecmo made a third DOAX game, they should come to MY island! It’ll be way better than Zack’s!

Anyway, so those are the characters in DOAX2. The game is best described as a ‘vacation simulator.’ You pick a character (guess who I picked) and go to an island and spend days doing vacation stuff in the form of mini-games. And that’s pretty much it really. Pretty light on gameplay. Might’ve been better if the games were actually any fun. So anyway, here’s what you can do on your stay at Zack’s Island.

Shopping and Gift Giving
There are some shops you can visit where you can buy swimsuits and accessories for your character. Or you can buy a camera and film and take pictures of them (again, where’s the focus in this game?). You can also make friends with the other characters, which doesn’t make much sense because they’re more than willing to beat the snot out of each other in the fighting games.

One of the ways to supposedly make friends is to give them presents! At first I was all excited about this because one of my favorite things to do in real life is give people presents. And I love doing that in video games, too, like Animal Crossing. But they take all the fun out of it in DOAX2. You see, every time I gave someone a present in the game, they would refuse it and give it back to me. And they were really rude about it, too. I mean, I got purple stuff to match Ayane’s hair (purple flower, purple volleyball), but she just gave it back and would say something mean. I know these characters are supposed to look attractive, but the way they were acting, they weren’t very attractive AT ALL. It’s important to be a very giving person, but at the same time, you should always be a gracious receiver as well. At least in Animal Crossing, the other characters are happy to get a present from you, and they’ll usually give you something in return.

Jet Ski
The jet ski races were the most fun part of the game to me. And that’s not saying much considering I’m not a big Wave Race fan. But it’s the only game I could repeatedly win on, so if I needed money, I would go here. You don’t even have to win first to earn money, just do lots of stunts.

Beach Volleyball
The controls for beach volleyball were too complex and it was hard to tell where the ball was going. I’ve played a bit of the first DOAX game at a friend’s house once and the volleyball in it is crappy, too. After that, I was bound and determined to find a GOOD beach volleyball game and I found it on the GameCube for ten bucks. It’s called Beach Spikers by Sega. It’s a really good, simple, arcadey game of volleyball. You should try it if you see it. You can also be Ulala in the game, who is way cooler than any of the DOA cast.

Water Slide
I love water slides! I like water parks and water slides much better than roller coasters. So I was excited at first when I found out you can do a water slide mini-game. BUT HOLY CRAP! THIS IS THE WATER SLIDE FROM HELL! You can actually fall off! It’s not too hard to stay on until the water slide goes UPSIDE DOWN! It’s the “Lawsuit-Waiting-To -Happen-Slide!” Helena must’ve ate her spinach, because every time she fell off the slide, she had no injuries and was always ready for more.

Tug of War
You and another DOA lady can stand on floats in the pool and play tug of war to try and pull the other player in the water. But it’s not a button mashing game like most other tug of war matches in video games. It’s actually pretty hard.

Butt Battle
In this game, both ladies stand on one pool float and try to knock each other off with their butts. It kind of reminds me of a fast paced version of the sumo mini-game from Zelda: Twilight Princess. Again, it’s really hard, too.

Pool Hopping
Returning from the original game, Pool Hopping was my favorite thing to do in the first one because the floats you have to hop across looked like giant Lucky Charms marshmallows. But here’s it’s even harder! You have to remember the colors of the Xbox buttons to hop on the colored floats, and I can never do that!

Beach Flags
This one’s really simple, but I can never win it anyway. Two of the DOA ladies lie down on the beach, and then get up and run to pick up a flag behind them. All you have to do is mash the button, but the other player always managed to dive down and get the flag before I do. I’ve never worn a bikini (nor do I plan to!), but I imagine that lying down on your belly on hot sand would really hurt in places!

Hotel Games
At nighttime at the hotel, you can play casino games like Roulette, Poker, and Blackjack. And yes, the cards have pictures of the DOA girls on them. Wouldn’t it be kind of weird to play cards with pictures of YOU on them? I’m not much of a card player, though. You can also play slots. The slot machines have the DOA girls on them, too. I think it would’ve been cooler if Tecmo made the slots have classic Tecmo characters on them so you can play Solomon’s Key, Rygar, or Bomb Jack slots.

And that’s pretty much all there is to DOAX2. Not much on substance. It’s a pretty hideous game, really. Not even worth the ten bucks I paid for it. Obviously you can tell I didn’t play it very much, but why should I spend my time on this when I can play a much cooler game like LEGO Batman or Sam & Max? Oh! I just had an awesome thought. If you could put Sam & Max in the DOAX2 game, it would be so much cooler!

Max: “Hey Sam, that woman’s fake French accent’s gonna drive me to KILL someone! Namely, YOU!”

Sam: “Now, now, little buddy, calm down. It’s not that bad.”

Max: “LIKE HELL IT ISN’T!”

And now, it’s time for a TRULY scary game! The scariest I’ve ever played…

BioShock
Here’s another game I normally wouldn’t play. Well, actually I didn’t technically play it, I watched Jeff and his friends play it. They always come over to play games since I have the big screen TV and a few weeks ago they brought over BioShock. Now, Jeff’s friends are older than he is, they’re around 18 and seniors in high school, so they can play M rated games. Now, normally when kids come to your house and bring something inappropriate, you should send them home. But I know Jeff like a brother, because he IS my brother, and I know that he can handle the things in Mature rated games because he’s very mature for his age. So I let them stay.

Of course I wasn’t going to let them off that easy. I was going to supervise at least for a while. That’s one of the things I think is important about the GamingWithChildren.com site is that you play WITH your kids, and discuss the things in games that you think is appropriate and things that are not. My dad used to let me watch movies I don’t think I could normally watch, but he was always with me the whole time, telling me which parts he didn’t think were appropriate and stuff. And I think I’m a better person because of it.

So for Bioshock, as they played we discussed what things in the game were unnecessary violent, and how we handle scary parts in the game. Sometimes we would make light of the scary parts by making fun of them, MST3K style, and other times we agreed to avoid parts all together. Even the 18 year olds thought some parts were too scary! I was also really proud of them for some of their decisions they made on their own. In the game you can choose to save these little kids or not, and they always chose to do the right thing. And they would always turn the volume down on the TV if they thought the people in the game were cussing too much. So even though they were playing an M rated game, I think they handled it very maturely.

But man, even so, Bioshock is the most scary game I’ve ever seen! Now, granted, I mostly play silly baby Kirby games so I’m not used to it. But Bioshock sure does make for a good Halloween game. It’s almost like a horror movie. It’s a first person shooter that’s very heavy on narrative. It gets kind of interesting sometimes, in a scary way. If the game were more like Metroid, in that you do more puzzles than shooting, I might even be a little interested in playing it. But it’s not.

The story is set back in the 50’s or 60’s and there’s an underwater city where people get genetic enhancements for super powers that make them accidentally mutate and go mad, and you have to go down there and put a stop to it. There’s more to the story than that, but it’s been a few weeks since they played it so I don’t remember as much. It’s pretty gory, you can bash people over the head with a big ol’ wrench and their brains and guts go everywhere. But even scarier is all the insane people who say all sorts of nonsensical things; that just creeped me out!

I know that you can make good and bad decisions about saving the children in the game, but I wish they could’ve stepped it up a bit further. It would be cool if they made a ray gun that when you fired it at the insane mutants, they would turn back to normal and be all better. I kind of felt sorry for them when you had to kill them because there wasn’t any hope for those people. But I guess if they had a gun like that, it would ruin the feel of the game.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about Bioshock. It’s pretty scary and makes for a good Halloween game. But one thing that Bioshock and DOAX2 have in common is that both games are for ADULTS ONLY! If you have little kids and own these games, you need to make sure they never seen them and keep them hidden under lock and key!

Well I imagine some of you will want to debate about sexism and violence in games after reading my blog, but don’t expect me to participate with you on that debate. I just don’t like arguing on the Internet with people I’ve never met before. But I do have some questions that I would like for you to answer in the comments section:

1. Do you think I handled playing DOAX2 and Bioshock maturely? I hope so. I tried.
2. Who is your favorite Dead or Alive character?
3. What’s the scariest game YOU’VE ever played?

–Cary

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