Dead or Alive Paradise Review

Venus clips will show the girls straddling as many phallic objects as a tropical island will accommodate. In this case a tree.

The focus of this awkward sub-series has always been the dating sim-esque interaction between the girls and this continues. Success at the minigames will accrue Zack dollars used to buy utterly useless accessories, or as is most likely, ever more revealing beach attire. If you pay attention to the girls’ profiles and send gifts according to their likes and dislikes they will reward you by partnering up with you for activities and when you’ve finally bought your way into their affections, you can watch hidden venus clips where you can take snaps to add to your own perverse Lonely Planet guide. Venus clips follow the girls splashing about in a pool or playing on inflatables in revealing poses, though they look like they’ve been mo-capped by three year olds learning to walk, such is the pathetic level of strained innocence and submissiveness in their behaviour.

These screen shots have been touched up. Sorry. It's true though.

For a series renowned for its stunning visuals, the move to the PSP is obviously going to take a hit, and if its PSP debut had been a fighting game this would’ve been acceptable. It’s not a game designed to be played though – it’s a piece of software created with the express intent of being voyeuristically ogled. While the previous games have endeavoured to present the female form in ever-increasing levels of gratuitous detail, this takes a step backwards, presenting unremarkable polygon models, with almost no perceptible variation beyond the head-swaps and skin tones. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a bad looking PSP game, but not good enough to support an entire purchase.

The boob-bounce physics at work here are genuinely absurd, with each mammary moving independently of each other like opposing magnets. Of course we can’t expect 360-levels of detail here, but Tecmo’s dolls look more lifeless and vacant than ever and really don’t belong on an under-powered handheld. The host format is called into question again when you actually take the thing out and play it in public. If you enjoy feeling like an embarrassed teenager caught with a copy of Playboy, feel free to play it on a crowded tube and soak up the uncomfortable stares. Actually scrap that – at least you might read an interesting article in Playboy.

Her name is Rio and she dances like an idiot.

Paradise fails on every level. As a collection of minigames it’s woefully inept. As an adult Animal Crossing-style gift-swap holiday it’s devoid of personality and any sense of interaction. As a pervert’s plaything, it’s about as arousing as a Chanel 5 softcore skin flick – the PSP supports MP4s – download the real thing if that’s what you want. Here’s an idea for the sequel Tecmo: drop the pretence of the video game altogether, slap an R18 sticker on it and release it as a pornographic DVD. The interactive experience could be handled just as well by a DVD remote as by the PSP.