When it comes down to it DOA has been a good fighting game series, but before now sadly it's been surpassed by the likes of Tekken, it has been the second best beat-em up series...not any more! Words cannot describe such a game it looks visually fantastic. Everyone knew before The Experience; from the screenshots that the game looked pixel perfect and now i can report that they play like that in game too, and they are amazingly smooth. DOA3 has lots of fighting types: Story, Versus, Survival, Tag Team they are just some of the different options you get at first. All the old characters are there along with a few new.

The X-Box controller is very well configured to the fighting style the block, punch, kick and throw combination make combos easy to pull and effective. The analogue stick makes moving around the arenas so easy; moving forwards, back and side-stepping are just so easily done as opposed to the original it was quite hard now it's a easy thing to do thanks to X-Box! Sound is about the same as in DOA2 but bearing in mind there's not much you can alter between the crying pain games characters make whilst being beaten to a pulp!

The arenas have improved too; you can literally this time go anywhere you want to within the fighting arena as opposed to DOA2 where only certain segments of the arena were öbreakableö to move to another part of the arena. Sadly DOA3 has a flaw and that being, there isn't too much difference between it and its predecessor, Tecmo have put a few more bells and whistles to add to the fun all pretty much standard stuff, other than the superb visuals and fluid animation.

But yet when Microsoft ask me to move onto the next machine I find myself gripping for life onto the X-Box pad trying not to let go of this beautiful beat-em up, when it comes out it will be the finest beat-em up out on the X-Box and if not on the market. If you're getting an X-Box on Microsoft's acclaimed 'Xmas dayö X-Boxes release day 14/03/01 (UK) then you must buy DOA3 with it whether you're a beat-em up junkie or not!!