Dead or Alive 5 Last Round review: the objectification of female characters is hard to ignore

£39.99; Team Ninja; Xbox One, PS4, PC, PS3, Xbox 360

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times, sometimes it’s really hard to be a video games fan. Take the Dead or Alive franchise for example, while a very entertaining and well balanced fighting game it also allows you to adjust the breast physics of the scantily clad female characters.

Ignoring the obvious issues stated above, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round is at its heart a technical three button fighting game that is easy to pick up but offers depth to the more experienced player.

Originally released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, this is certainly the best entry in the series and Last Round tarts up the visuals and adds the characters previously released as DLC.

Visually, it is quite obvious that this is an upgraded last gen game, as while it looks sharp at 1080p and runs at 60fps, some of the environments and textures can look particularly shoddy given the extra fidelity.

While there is a “story mode”, the plot is impossible to follow unless you have kept up with the previous games in the series, and the acting and scenarios are all terrible, as you might expect. Although I doubt that anybody will be playing this for the plot.

What people will be playing this game for is the fighting, and that is something DOA5:LR handles very well. There is a depth to the combo, throws and striking that provides a good amount of strategy to more experienced players. People new to the game can also enjoy the fighting with the destructible and changeable stages adding excitement.

As with many new games, it's had its share of launch problems, predominantly with the online play which can cause bugs to delete entire saves. The developers have acknowledged the issues and are apparently working to patch the problems.

It is, however, hard to ignore the objectification of the female characters, which makes the fact that this is actually quite a good game all the more annoying. This sort of needless fan service doesn’t add anything to the game and for me actually takes quite a lot away from the experience. If you can look past all that, this is a very competent fighting game that’s great fun with friends (just wait for it to be patched before buying).