Dead Or Alive Paradise (Sony PSP)

Dead or Alive: Paradise is a re-release of Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 on the 360. Some of the games have been stripped away (Jet Race and Water Slide), and an extra character has been added. On the topic of that extra character, Rio, she is now officially the best DoA girl.

Here's the long and short of it: DoA:P is a game based on mini games and collection. It can be played in bursts of less than 5 minutes, or for extended periods. It saves all the time, so you can turn it on and off whenever you want. If you enjoy simple mini games, anything to do with collection, or digital females, then you'll like it.

The macro game which encompasses the micro games is just plain relaxing, and that's the best word to describe the game. A two week holiday on a tropical island, punctuated by the casino, the volleyball, and the obligatory pictures.

But it expecting a relaxing collection of minigames, and you'll get an enjoyable experience. Buy it expecting anything else, and you'll not get into it at all (see the other review for more on that line of thought).

I'm very generous when it comes to reviews. If you see my other reviews you'll see that I tend to be more forgiving to bad games and focus on their strengths. So when I say that this game is terribly terribly bad, and should never have been created, it really is saying something.

The premise of the game is very very simple: take on the role of one of the women in DOA, wander around an island for two virtual weeks, play minigames to earn money, spend money in shops, play in the casino in the evening, give gifts and make friends with other girls in the DOA series. This game involves attractive women, gambling and bikinis. It should be my perfect game, and yet it is so terrible that after 15 minutes you've near enough seen all there is to see, and after 45 minutes you're ready to bin the game altogether.

The subgames are mediocre at best. Pool hopping involves crossing the pool by pressing buttons in conjunction with the colour pad you're hopping onto (a la any rythmn game you care to mention). I've played it once. I lost but felt obsolutely no need to try again. Beach volleyball is slightly better, at least you can move around and hit the ball. It seems I'm terrible at this, but I'm not exactly beating myself up over it.

Your reward for your efforts is money to spend in the shops. You can buy outfits (read: bikinis), accessories and food. All of which you can gift wrap and give to other women in order to become their friends (which gives a rather shallow view of women IMO).

You can also visit the pool and other beaches which play certain "Venus clips", at which point you can get a camera out and take pictures of your DOA character posing on the sunlounger, rubbing sun lotion onto herself, swimming etc. You'd think that this would be the highlight of the game (considering the game is entirely focused on the best way of showing computer generated girls in bikinis), and it is. But graphically the character models are very mediocre, with terrible textures. It certainly does not push the boundaries of the PSP graphically. The zoom function of the camera is also restricted, ironically taking all the fun out of the more tittilating aspects of the game that the game itself is trying to promote. The pictures that you take can be used as wallpaper on your PSP's XMB, which is quite cool. Some amateur photographers may get some minor pleasure out of this feature. But it's pretty much as dull and shallow as the rest of the game.

In the evening you can visit the casino. Where you can bet some of your lethargically-earned cash in order to get more cash. You can compete against other women on the island, or against the dealer. The games are competent, and not unpleasant. I do like a game of blackjack so this part of the game was quite good for me.

Its amazing that in a game that is designed to exploit bikini-clad computer characters in order to make a quick buck, that so many things are wrong. Its a foolproof genre, and yet this game manages to get nearly everything absolutely wrong. All in all this game is just a very small collection of rather dull minigames. Unless you are obsessed with one of the characters from Dead or Alive, or are in desperate need of a good looking wallpaper for your PSP, I would leave this one well alone!

This version of the extreme beach volleyball collection has all the downsides of the large screen versions (poor camera angles, unresponsive commands, fiddly controls etc) and introduces fresh niggles into the equation. Now you have to squint at a PSP screen in a desperate attempt to figure out what is going on. Bought this hoping for a bit of light relief, I feel robbed. This title is going straight to a second hand game shop in the hope I can get a little bit of the wasted money back.