Death by Degrees (DbD) stars one of gaming’s hottest vixens: Nina Williams of the Tekken series. The game has been released for some time, but I haven’t had the opportunity to actually sit down and play it until recently. I’ve read some pretty excruciating things, and was half expecting to be turned inside out by all the dry heaving I supposed to be doing while I played the game. While the game is far from a masterpiece, it isn’t the abomination it’s been made out to be.
First of all the presentation is phenomenal. The opening FMV (Full Motion Video) intro is long, very well done, and gets you hyped about playing the game. You’ll find many beautifully done video sequences throughout Death by Degrees and as you view each one you’ll unlock it for playback from the main menu. If you manage to beat the game you’ll be able to piece together a nice mini-movie retelling the events of DbD.
It’s highly doubtful you’ll be pony'ing up fifty bucks to unlock twenty minutes of Full Motion Video though. It’s probably going to come down to an actual game to make you want to do that, and this one is a mixed bag of decent highs and extremely low lows. The camera system being the biggest and most atrocious low point; it’s so bad it actually manages to drag down some of the things that should be fun to play around with in the game.
The gameplay starts promisingly enough (if you’re a fully functioning male at least). An early tutorial let’s you ‘practice’ beating up on helpless goons in a very revealing white bikini.
The action you get acquainted with in the Tutorial just screamed “game for everybody.” You move around with the left Analog Stick on your Playstation 2 Controller and all you have to do to kick the crap out of the bad guys is tap the right Analog Stick in their direction. The only extra difficulty thrown into to the fighting engine is the ability to equip weapons, and perform special moves (which simply require you to hold down the L2 button, and add the usual tapping of the right Analog Stick).
Even something like jumping is done in a very easy to understand way -- in that you don’t even have to do it. When you need to jump the game will let you know and actually do it for you.
The fighting engine harkens back to the old beat-em-up days of Double Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It seemed like a perfect plan to draw anybody into a gameplay session – but man ‘o man does the camera just kill the party. It makes it so hard to actually judge which way you have to swing your right Analog Stick (to attack), and because of that you’ll just often end up missing your opponents.
Speaking of opponents; never has a secret evil organization had so many useless thugs. They come at you in wave after re-spawning wave of fresh meat. The group of 10 thugs attacking you at once isn’t as big of a problem as the re-spawning. If you leave any room that requires loading and then re-enter it, you’ll literally be facing the same thugs you faced not 5 seconds earlier. That issue kind of puts a damper on exploration, although it makes it easier to earn experience through battle.
You can combine each of your hits to form combos. After every hit you have a certain amount of time to strike someone again to start or maintain a combo (usually about a second or so). The bigger the combo the more experience is gained after each mini-rumble.
The only other major issue (note the word major) you’ll find in Death by Degrees are the save points. For some absolutely unknown reason Namco decided it’s was a “good” idea to hide the save points, and make you look for them. As you approach a hidden save point a satellite icon will appear on your screen to help guide you to it. If ever there was an idea to make someone NOT want to save a game that would be it.
There’s nothing really revolutionary about the graphics (unless you count Nina’s breasts), but all-in-all they’re adequate. The sound presentation is actually is pretty good. With the exception of the grading intro song the music is decent, and the voice acting (as well as the script) is top notch – in fact it’s one of the best things about this game.
Death by Degrees isn’t as bad as some have made it out to be, and if Namco ever made a sequel that ironed out the major issues of this game they’d have a solid “beat ‘em up”. But considering the hard earned money you’d have to pay to own this title, I’d say stick to a weekend rental if you want to get your “impossibly gorgeous, wears next to nothing, ass-kicking heroine” fix.
