Get your hands on this game, dead or alive

IF it is to succeed, the Microsoft X Box needs to cover all software bases. One of the most crucial barometers for success has to be a decent beat 'em up and Dead or Alive 3 promises to be just that.

Its predecessor was a smash hit for both the Dreamcast and the PS2 so it was a surprise to find this latest instalment bearing the "X Box only" legend on the jewel case when it hit shops recently. The series started out on the PS1 - a platform brimming with decent fighting games. At the time, its finer points were overlooked by many games critics because of the one unique feature it offered: women fighters with out-sized chests. An exaggerated physics model meant many of the fights came to resemble a teenage boy's fantasy death match played out between Page Three girls. Subtle it wasn't. The somewhat puerile graphics are carried over into the third instalment but look beyond the immature and you'll find a fighting game of rare quality.

Dreamcast was the first platform to give programmers the muscle to create multiple platform-fighting arenas complete with destructible three-dimensional objects. X Box takes this to another level.

The first time your character sends an opponent flying through a window and the camera follows them as they plummet to the level below, you'll be blown away. Or knock a character off their feet in snow and you'll be amazed as they leave a realistic imprint on the ground. The graphical finesse even extends to individual leaves on the trees and sea gulls that swoop down from the sky.

Why did they do it? Because the X Box meant that they could. Tecmo has made good use of all the X Box's graphical muscle to make DOA 3 a real triple AAA showcase title for the platform. All sixteen characters are wonderfully animated and move with an athleticism fit to rival even the mighty Soul Calibre - until now the undisputed king of the beat 'em ups on any console.

The extra memory has allowed DOPA 3's programmers to create perfectly believable worlds. That nVidia GeForce card has given rise to wonderful reflection effects and almost photo-realistic textures. As you'd expect, each character has individual signature moves that devotees of the genre will spend hours perfecting. The interactive arenas add another facet to the fighting too, making it more difficult for random button-bashers to win out by sheer luck. For the somewhat less dedicated, Tecmo has simplified some of the more frequently used controls like the circle move and the side-step. Sadly they haven't mapped character movement to the analogue thumb sticks - this is a digital only environment - and the X Box controller has never felt bulkier than when you're low on energy and trying to pummel an opponent. I'm not too sure about the macros that seem to have been committed to some of the smaller buttons, either. Novices will rely on them too much - making a lightweight game even easier. None of which will matter to fans of the genre who will just rejoice in the fact that DOA 3 is, for the moment at least, the very best fighting game money can buy.

Keep The Balance. Format: Game Boy Color. Publisher: JoWood Productions. Price: £24.99

Despite the success of the Game Boy Advance, owners of the original Nintendo Hand Held are still well catered for. This title is a colourful variation on the Bubble Bobble format. You have two scales that have to be kept in perfect balance by shooting objects at them. Keep everything in equilibrium and you collect points. Get it wrong and the whole thing comes tumbling down. There are five game worlds to play through but seasoned Game Boy-ers will have done it all before. Newbies looking for a decent puzzle game to sit alongside the ubiquitous Tetris could do worse, though.

Microsoft Picture It Photo & print Studio. Format: PC. Publisher: Microsoft. Price: varies.

With its plethora of projects which hold you by the hand and its cartoon-like graphics, Picture It will never threaten the likes of Photoshop for image manipulation supremacy. Of course it's aimed at home users and not professionals and here the programme is remarkably well-featured for the money. Digital photographers with a few months under their belts will probably opt for the more serious look of something like Paint Shop Pro but anyone new to photo manipulation will find this software more than up to the job. Delve a bit deeper and you'll find some decent tools. The magic lasso is particularly good (all graphics packages have them but some are better than others) although the clone tool proved infuriatingly difficult to use. Why can't Microsoft allow us to anchor the tool as you can with so many other image programmes? Published with a mass of templates and clip art on a DVD ROM (you'll need a big chunk of your hard disk to put the whole programme onto your PC), Picture It is the ideal introduction to computer graphics manipulation. I'd advise you to go for the minimum install though and keep your disc handy for the clip art.

All you worms fans out there will have spotted that I boobed in my review of Worms Blast recently. The PS2 version is not £39.99 but a far more reasonable £29.99. The Ubi-soft strategy blast fest is even cheaper £19.99 if you fancy your thrills on the PC. Apologies to all concerned.

CHEAT OF THE WEEK

Dead or Alive 3 is a graphical tour de force so what could be better than a slow motion replay of your best knockouts? Once you win a match hold X+A+B until the replay starts. You should then be able to rewind/and slow down the action with the Y button.

Published: 26/04/2002