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Death by Degrees
The name
Nina Williams, brings sighs of love from Tekken fans from around the
world. This sexy assassin that made her debut from Tekken series finally
returns in a solo adventure entitled Death by Degrees that has Nina
investigating the whereabouts of stolen weaponry. The game is a
combination of action meets adventure with an innovative 360 degree
fighting system and a fluid, acrobatic hand-to-hand combat engine at her
disposal, Nina must infiltrate a shadowy underworld and reveal
conspiracy on a global scale. Use any means necessary—including stealth,
espionage, ferocious gunplay and brutal weapon attacks—to recover the
stolen goods and uncover the truth.
With that said, the fighting system of Death by Degrees was suppose to
be revolutionary for this game but unfortunately it comes up short with
repetitive attacks and limited combos. The game tries and give you some
combos to do right at the start but these seem pointless since they are
hard to execute and just don't work as effectively as continuously
flicking the stick at the enemy. Nina also has the ability to fire guns
and use melee weapons such as baseball bats but these are not nearly as
effective as simply kicking the crap out of the enemy.
One of the most unique features in the game is the X-Ray mode. When you
perform a critical strike to an opponent, a X-Ray scan comes up of the
inside of the enemy's body and there will be certain places glowing red
which means you have to put your pointer over top of one of those areas
and flick the stick at it. After you have done this, you will exit X-Ray
mode and Nina will strike the opponent with a kick or punch in the
general area you attacked then it will enter X-Ray mode again and show
the portion you hit breaking in some way. You can break quite a few
places on the enemy's body such as their legs, arms, ribs, and skull.
The weird thing is when you get farther in the game this attack won't
take down must opponents so you are left fighting a dude with a broken
skull who can still take quite an ass kicking before staying down.
Apart from fighting, Nina must also perform a variety of mission
objectives such as getting to point B from point A which is sometimes
quite a task since the map is very confusing and never really gives you
a clear route to your objective. Most of the higher security doors have
numbers on them which correspond to how high the security is. You will
acquire fingerprints throughout the game which can be used to open these
doors. Another annoying thing about the interface is the small loading
times that pop up when you try to do anything like pull out a new weapon
or even push a box. This little bit of loading between each thing really
drags down the pace of the game.
The graphics are by far the best aspect of the game which isn't saying a
whole lot. The character models are very detailed but their animations
are very stilted. The environments are very bland but get the job done.
The cutscenes are done very well with nice camera angles and the
animation is quite good during this portion of the game. One nice touch
happens after a boss battle where Nina's clothes are all ripped which
gives off the feel that the boss battle was very tough but in reality
they were a tad too easy.
The audio of Death by Degrees is extremely corny and some of the voice
acting is extremely clichéd but this can be expected by the Tekken
series and actually makes for some interesting dialogue. The musical
score of the title is unfortunately a little repetitive and doesn't have
the same "feel" as the Tekken fighting games but fortunately the music
is only predominant in the battle scenes. The game also features a
plethora of "pleasing" sound effects, especially when Nina performs her
critical strike maneuver.
In
conclusion, Death by Degrees is an interesting game that tries to blend
the world of Tekken with that of an adventure game but unfortunately it
fails in this task. With a clichéd storyline, a sexy assassin name Nina
Williams and a fairly average combat system, Death by Degrees is clearly
designed for the Tekken fans that is probably worth a rent before you
buy.
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