Use of the shoulder buttons in conjunction adds a further combo layer, with a special attack assigned to L1, while a focus bar charges up to enable you to pull off a Critical Strike move when it's at its peak. Rather like the Sony best-'em-up flop Rise To Honor, Death By Degrees employs a twin analogue stick system where left governs your movements and right performs 360 degree attacks by simply pointing the stick in the direction of your assailant. Essentially all that's been required of us to date is to whack the right stick in the direction of an assailant and let the game do the rest. Let's just say it's got the potential to be good, but that early on the lack of challenge on offer renders the need for any actual skill or timing somewhat redundant. Well it's hard to judge adequately from only a few hours play. Given the Tekken heritage, the combat's got to be good, right? Hrm. Still, no complaints here, on the whole, but we wish Nina's sussies were just that bit sharper, thanks. The only disappointment is perhaps the lack of a progressive scan mode something which made Soul Calibur II look astounding on the PAL PS2 18 months back. As you'd expect, character models are both well animated and exceptionally detailed - if we'd were given less we'd be surprised - and getting to see Nina romp around in suspenders and the unlikeliest costume in gaming history is a truly perverse pleasure, in a sort of darkly humorous kind of way.

Playing what appears to be a fully finished build (although labelled 'Preview' anyway), we had a chance to plough through a decent chunk of the initial stages of the game, set aboard a large luxury Ocean liner replete with enough security to start a small war.ДЄs a spectacle there's little to fault with the game, with a lively set of backdrops, incidental animations and a decent amount of detail coupled with a largely sensible third-person camera that you can force over the shoulder now and again if you're in need of a different view. The setting is somewhat a sideshow to the main event of kicking 360-degrees worth crap out of endless goons, but involves tracking down some sort of stolen high-tech secret weapon. Having cut her cloth (and now having apparently run out of the stuff) in various episodes of Tekken-related jopypad-mashing chaos, it's evidently the right time to unleash her for her own spin-off game a combat-heavy title which pinches liberally from all manner of familiar titles including Rise To Honor, Resident Evil and even Silent Scope. Nina Williams is quite probably mankind's greatest achievement, and now she's got a game all of her own to show off all her kinky outfits. All that rubbish like 'my feet are killing me' and pretending to not be able to walk it's all a giant ruse to lull us into a false sense of security just moments before delivering an almighty roundhouse boot to the nads. It's a little known fact that women fight better in four-inch stillies. Fact: a United Nations mandate was secretly passed in 1993 to ensure that any women appearing in videogames would have to be 34DD, preferably blonde, sport a slightly sour glacial stare and never appear without figure-hugging attire. Fact: there has never been a short ugly fat bird in a beat-'em-up.

Death by degrees ps2 game