Introduction
Dead or Alive 3 was Tecmo's first game for the Xbox, and it’s quite a good game. The graphics are still some of the best around, and the fighting itself is great. There are a few problems however, which you will read about later in the review.

Gameplay
The graphics in this game are mind blowing. Each character has so many little details to them; I sometimes think they are real! The girls in the game (and there are a lot of them) look even more impressive. It seems Tecmo spent more time detailing the girls for obvious reasons. The fighting environments look equally beautiful, with lots of great textures and details to them. All of these great visuals run in 60 frames per second, which is beyond me how they managed to do that Once you see this game, you'll see how obviously inferior the other 3D fighting games that have come out are.

Fun
You can find this for about 30 dollars now, which is a great deal for such a good game. If you are a fan of fighting games, you should go pick this up as soon as possible, you won't regret it at all!

Story
The game itself plays like almost every other 3D fighter. There are two enemies on the screen, and you just try to beat the other fighter senseless. Each character has a health bar that is depleted with every successful blow to him or her. Each character has about 30 or 40 different moves they can do, ranging from a high punch to the face to a sweeping attack with their legs. One of the best assets to the fighting system of DoA3 is the combos. Once you get a good combo going, you can finish your opponent off with a move that will send them flying across the screen. This is even more satisfying when you can send them off the cliff, which will make him/her lose even more health. This is another cool aspect of DoA3. Most stages have several different areas that can be fought in, that are only accessed by hitting your opponent or getting hit yourself off the cliff of a building or any other high area. This puts a lot of new strategy into the genre.

Graphics
The music is a mixed bag in this game. Some levels have good techno music, but other levels music is downright annoying. Fortunately, the menu music is done by Aerosmith, which really seems to fit in this game well. What really saves the sound score are the sound effects. These are possibly the best sound effects I've ever heard in a fighting game! Every single punch, kick, smash, etc. sounds exactly as they should. You'd almost think they were actually beating people up to get these sounds so perfect.

Sound
The replay value of DoA3 is about what you'd expect from a fighting game. You will mainly be playing single player to master the characters, and you get a lot of replay value when playing multiplayer matches. In the single player game, there are quite a few modes like story mode, tag team mode, and more, but these don't make it as good or a single player game as Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance for instance.