Dead or Alive 5 is a bit less than two months away and we're starting to see more video coming out on a pretty regular basis. now, i don't make fighting games, but i bet that balancing out the damage dealt by grabs, counters, and combos requires a whole lotta testing and feedback. with that said, some dudes over at Tecmo Koei America have been putting out some short combo videos of the stuff they've done during testing. some of the damage done by these combos are pretty ludicrous but it is test footage so they're assuring us that some of this stuff probably won't be in the final build.

• here's the first one with Kokoro,Kasumi, Jann Lee, Akira (from Virtua Fighter), Lei Fang and newcomer Rig.
• the second one features Ayane (!!!), Hayate, Tina, Bass, Zack and Sarah (also from Virtua Fighter).
• the third one showcases combos with Hitomi, Ryu, Christie, Bayman and Lisa (La Mariposa).

in addition to that stuff, they put up matches as well.

• Tina vs Bayman
• Ayane vs Tina
• Jann Lee vs Lisa

i'd embed these videos but the giant bomb text interface doesn't make it very easy to make the videos presentable. as for the videos themselves, the game certainly looks a lot more.. um, floaty than before. it looks like dudes (and ladies) have a lot more time in the air when they get launched, which looks like there's a lot more potential for awesome some looking combos, especially for Hitomi and Kasumi. like i said, there's some pretty crazy damage shown in those videos that's hopefully fixed by the time that the game launches.

along with all this stuff, there's gonna be a second Dead or Alive 5 tournament, continuing on from the E3 tournament. it's gonna be hosted by IGN after their 12 Days of DOA5 thingy that they've got going on. every day (besides weekends) they will put up some new information about a specific fighter, game footage or expanding upon changes from build to build as the game comes closer to release. it all finishes off with their DOA5 tournament that'll be on the 18th. you can find information, links to articles and all that junk over on this page. the articles they have up are actually real fascinating, especially the one up about Rig.

that's about it right now. i just thought i'd throw this up since there hasn't been that much coverage of Dead or Alive 5 on Giant Bomb.

@AjayRaz: How hot are the girls?

@Daveyo520 said:

@AjayRaz: How hot are the girls?

@AjayRaz: I'll be interested to see what the final build feels like. The Alpha Demo is neat but I know they've since tweaked the shit out of it. Also kinda odd some characters seem to be missing moves. I noticed Ayane's jump grab isn't in DOA 5 Alpha demo. I'm still really excited for it though. The only thing I'm really worried about is the netcode. In DOA 4 it is pretty hit or miss although at least on my end when we've been playing it seems manageable enough.

@Demoskinos: the alpha build is more or less useless now. if anything, it's kind of fun to play around with but it's so outdated and barebones on both content and options, you're probably better off playing Dead or Alive 4 instead. the DOA5 alpha demo truly shines when it's with another player, but there's not much else going for it apart from that. as for the netcode, keep in mind that DOA4 was a game released nearly seven years ago. i'm still grateful that it's even still online. although with that said, i don't know what the online standards were like in 2005 so i can't say with certainty. when DOA4's netcode is bad, it's baaad.

although i don't think Team Ninja has ever had the greatest netcode track record. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2's online play was frankly, awful. i never once got into a game that played smoothly. Ninja Gaiden 3 was pretty terrible too, although just about everything in that game's online component was a disaster. DOA Dimensions wasn't bad, but a lot of people have said otherwise about latency in that game.

@AjayRaz: Oh for sure. I know I've read about tons of changes like them restricting the "charge" move thing to under 35% health or something and adding critical burst moves and also shortening the time you have to pick to aim your attack when you hit with a charge move. As for Sigma 2 I actually got some matches that were pretty playable. In fact besides a few of the higher tier missions I have everything beaten. Gaiden 3's online was a pretty big disaster the coop was playable to an extent but the competitive stuff was just broken. You'd hit people with launchers to try to Izuna drop them and the hits would never connect like you wanted. Shame cause that mode was sorta kinda fun for how awful it had the potential to be. Think I actually got to level 30 or something on PS3 version because yes... I bought that game twice. >_>

New videos (at least that Im aware of) showing off each currently announced character's Power blow and "Cliffhanger" moves.