Fighting game fans have had a long wait for Tecmo's Dead or Alive Ultimate. Delay after delay, fans waited and waited for Team Ninja to perfect their fighting game masterpiece. Now... after nearly a year of delays, DOA Ultimate is here, and it's amazing! Included in Ultimate is a direct Saturn port of the original Dead or Alive, as well as a revamped Dead or Alive 2. DOA1 is great for bringing back old memories, and some gamers will have fun with it, but let's be real, DOA2 is where a vast majority of the play time will be had.

You may be asking yourself why Tecmo decided to include DOA2 instead of DOA3. According to Team Ninja, they wanted the entire DOA series to be available on the Xbox, and since DOA3 was a launch title, the first two games in the series took priority. While that all makes sense, this is not 100% DOA2. The ability to sidestep by holding up or down, and Hitomi from Dead or Alive 3 have been included in Ultimate. So this is more like DOA2.5 instead of DOA2, which begs the question: why not simply add the remaining two DOA3 characters and the handful of new moves each character received in DOA3?

With that said, DOA2 Ultimate is still the best online fighting game to date, and simply a blast to play. The fighting engine in Dead or Alive has never been as deep as Virtua Fighter or Tekken, but it is considerably deeper than most people give it credit for. Even with half the character count, the gameplay depth in DOAU completely dwarfs the depth found in MK: Deception. Plus, instead of having 1000 unlockables with 90% being production art that no one will really care about after a week, DOAU includes 200 costumes in total, with some characters having as many as 20 different outfits.

Speaking of looks, this is the best looking Dead or Alive to date, and definitely in the running for one of the best looking Xbox titles. Some of the stages are simply breathtaking, and of course, the girls look fabulous. Add progressive scan 480p support for HDTVs and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio for home theater enthusiasts and you pretty much have the complete audio/visual package for your Xbox.

Once you get past the outstanding visual and audio features, you can dig into the plethora of gameplay modes. All of the basics are here with Story, Time Attack, Team, Tag, Battle Record, etc. The practice mode is still a bit lacking since it doesn't show you move heights and a few other minor things are lacking, but only high level players should be affected by this. Of course, most of your time will likely be spent with the online mode of DOA2 Ultimate, and let us say right off the bat, it's definitely top notch.

Tecmo and Team Ninja have been saying since day one that playing online will not be ruined by large amounts of lag. After extensive online play time during peak and off-peak hours, we can safely say that Dead or Alive Ultimate does not suffer from a lot of lag. However, that doesn't mean the lag is nonexistent. During peak hours especially, you'll find several matches plagued with a good amount of latency. While this usually doesn't last for more than a match or two, we've seen it very bad at times. Luckily it's smooth as silk most of the time, and when you do get lag, it's generally light and doesn't affect the gameplay too badly.

Complementing the online play is arguably the best feature of DOA Ultimate; the virtual arcade. Everything is here including: user created tournaments, winner stays, loser stays, survival, kumite, and tag battle. You can even upload your survival and time attack scores to compare to other players around the world. Each online mode of play allows up to 8 players to hang out in a lobby, almost like they were hanging out at an arcade.

Depending on what mode you're playing 2-4 players will be in a match at one time, while the remaining players can watch the action. This is the best setup we've seen for an online fighting game and works wonders for the fun factor. All 8 players can talk via the Xbox Communicator while playing or watching, so trash talk, or strategy talk can be had all around. Unfortunately, you can't use the Battle Record option during online play, but Tecmo had to leave something for Dead or Alive 4.

We can easily say Dead or Alive Ultimate is the best online fighting game ever. Nothing even comes close to what this game offers in the online department. It pushes the Xbox to its limits for audio and visual, and it has a ton of unlockables for those willing to play through Story mode 200 times. It's not perfect, with a bit of lag during online play, and an identity problem between DOA2 and DOA3, but those are minor complaints when you look at everything this title offers. Bottom line... if you have Xbox Live, buy this game.