On Thursday I got my review copy of DoA 5 Last Round in the mail at work. Admittedly, I was a little bit excited. I didn't have much experience with the DoA series, so I was going in to the review as fresh as could be. While the rest of the guys were due to play some Grand Theft Auto 5, I was ready to spend a few hours digging in to the game to give you guys a great review by the weekend's end.
Unfortunately, that was not to be the case.
As of this writing (Friday at noon), DoA remains completely unplayable for many people, across multiple platforms. Personally, I can't even start the game. I get a default error title. Others are experiencing tons of crashes, constantly. Do a search of "Dead or Alive 5 crash" and you'll see a ton of videos of the game just stopping, for no reason.
There's a large core audience of fighter game enthusiasts out there, and many of them bought specialized peripherals from companies like Mad Catz in order to have the edge that they desire in their game. Unfortunately for them, their peripherals don't work at all. Whether this is the fault of Mad Catz, or the developer remains to be seen.
Some people on the PS4 can't even find the game to purchase it, let alone be able to play it. DoA developer Team Ninja claims that they are working on solving all of these issues, but these issues shouldn't exist in the first place.
I wrote an article a few weeks back that you can read here in regards to a lot of games lately having poor launches. DoA is just the latest in the list of games to have one. It is an indication of a bigger problem in an industry that is now worth billions of dollars. The focus is on profits, and not quality. We're getting more and more games (Triple A titles or not) that simply do not work on launch. For developers and publishers to ask us to spend $60-100 on something that has no guarantee of working is ridiculous, and yet that is the point we are at right now.
Do not buy Dead or Alive 5 Last Round yet. Personally, I would say don't buy it ever. Let the the developer (and others like it) know that this is simply unacceptable.
If the game starts to work in a reasonable time frame, we will have a review up as soon as possible. Until then, keeping checking back at eotbar.com for all of the latest updates and news regarding this issue, and more.
http://www.eotbar.com/featured/2015/2/20/news-dead-or-alive-5-last-round-is-broken
