Over the past few years, there’s no doubt that the Dead or Alive series has been subject to a fair amount of controversy regarding it’s scantily clad, gravity defying women who just happen to be playing volleyball. But now that same, gravity defying jiggle is making it’s way into the palm of your hand in the form of Dead or Alive: Paradise for the PSP.
Your average gamer probably wouldn’t take this kind of title seriously, as there is no real goal to the game other than to experience the life of an island hopping “Richie Rich” who loves to gamble and just so happens to have dozens of gorgeous women at his disposal to “play with” (take that one as you will…). In all honesty, to most people, Dead or Alive: Paradise seems more like an excuse to watch softcore porn in the palm of your hand. But apparently that’s not the case… at least according to the game’s director, Yoshinori Ueda.
Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer, Ueda had this to say:
“That’s certainly not something we’re intentionally going for,” he said. “From our perspective, we’re trying to make beautiful women, that has been the focus – we want our characters to be beautiful. The DOA characters are strong and that they look the way they do is based on trying to bring out the beauty of women.
We’re certainly not trying to degrade women. They have beautiful bodies. We’re trying to show off the beauty of their bodies but we’re not trying to be degrading about it – we’re trying to show that they are beautiful characters.
It’s not that we were trying to make softcore porn. That’s definitely not the goal.
We know that everyone is going to have a different experience with the game – everyone has their own opinion,” shrugged Ueda. “For us, the goal was really to offer a little bit of paradise to the users, and we hope that people playing the game will be able to come away with the feeling that they’ve visited paradise.”
This latest iteration in the series is visually, quite beautiful, and that’s what tends to attract gamers to the Dead or Alive games time and time again, but I’d much rather see Tecmo invest their time and energy into making Dead or Alive 5 (which is rumored to be in development) totally awesome.
The ESRB has already had a field day with the title, having to retract statements which were less than favorable regarding the game, but promptly insured that an ‘M’ rating would suffice, essentially due to the fact that players can now partake in virtual photo shoots featuring the women in the game.
Dead or Alive: Paradise is slated for release around the world on April 2nd, 2010, with a US release scheduled for some time in Q2 of this year, God help us…
