The Dead or Alive series has, over the past 13 years, delighted 14- and 15-year-old boys with its heady mix of derivative fighting action and bouncing, oversized, pixellated breasts.
In Dead or Alive Paradise, its, developer Tecmo Koei, has decided to concentrate solely on the latter, somewhat troubling aspect of the franchise's appeal, in what is quite possibly the strangest game I've ever had the privilege of playing. Load the game up and you're greeted with an intro sequence that would get you some pretty strange (and worried) looks if you were to play it on the tube – anime-stylised girls cavorting on a desert island, with the camera zooming in on chest and crotch areas at every opportunity. They're all characters you'd recognise from the DoA series if you were given the opportunity to look at their faces.
Once you've chosen from the selection of scantily clad women – information such as their measurements and favourite colour is available, so you can make an informed decision – you're whisked away via a bizarre cutscene to New Zack Island on holiday. And that's where the real fun begins.
The gameplay – if a title like this warrants such terminology – is split over a very small array of minigames, each designed to showcase your chosen woman's "assets" in different locales. There's a half-hearted beach volleyball sim, which isn't really much fun at all. A chance to visit a casino and play card games (don't worry, there are still breasts to look at here even though it's indoors). A game where you have to run across floating pads in a swimming pool. And that's about it, four or five stages that would be dull even if it were real-life half-naked women you were watching, let alone the poorly rendered ones trapped in your PSP screen.
Such fun and frolics are but a sideshow to Paradise's main feature – and this is where things get really strange. If it weren't disconcerting enough picking your character based on her bra size, it turns out that all the points you accrue are to be used on buying smaller and smaller bikinis for the "relax" stage – an opportunity to take photographs of your girl reposing, stretching or lotioning herself up. These photographs are then stored in a Precious Memories album so you can remember the fun times you had with your synthetic concubine. And you can email the photos to your friends. If anyone receives one of these in their inbox, I'd be very, very worried about the sender.
What makes it even worse is the unmitigated tedium of navigating between all the different activities. RPG-lite elements such as having to sleep and cultivating relationships are included I suppose to add depth, but are more frustrating than anything, particularly if you just want to switch the game on for a quick round of lecherous blackjack.
DoA Paradise is yet another example of a game that may well make sense in a foreign market but is utterly baffling and bewildering when brought to these shores. As if you need me to say it, if you're keen on seeing some flesh on your PSP screen, there are better ways to go about it. And while a title focused solely on breasts may titillate a small selection of adolescent gamers and weirdos, even then the gaming elements on offer are so tiresome I can't see many persevering with it for more than half an hour. A relatively harmless cultural curiosity, perhaps, but one that made me feel pretty uncomfortable.
