A thin premise of a narrative places these girls on a tropical paradise of an island, where men don’t exist, the girls exclusively wear swimsuits, and they don’t feel the slightest inhibitions in what they get up to. It’s a theme that is overtly the case in Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, given that the entire experience is designed around drawing your attention to the beauty and physical anatomy of the girls. film, paintings, and games often depict the world (and the women within it) based on how men see it and in relation to masculine world views. First conceived by Laura Mulvey (one of the most important film theorists in the history of the medium), it works on the principle that in many examples of visual arts, the process in creating and then viewing an art work is focused on the masculine viewer i.e. The concept of the “male gaze” came out of feminist criticism and analysis in cinema, and it’s is a really simple theory in practice. So, before I go on to rave about how much I absolutely adore this game, I’m going to start out by contextualising it by explaining what the male gaze is, and why it’s worth being aware of it, even if you then join me in really enjoying this game. A lot has been said about the male gaze and its relationship to video games, and a lot of that is completely inaccurate. That is because the entire game is literally built around the theme of exploitation, and its sole purpose in existing is to indulge the male gaze. I’m sure there are going to be people who are now going to take to the comments and yell at me for stifling creative freedom or whatever (despite being one of the biggest fans of the game out there, and as far as I can tell I was the first in the media to actually campaign for a Dead or Alive Xtreme 3), but the simple reality is that there's no rational, plausible way to argue that this game is not exploitative. Assuming, of course, you can get past the whole exploitation thing. So Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 is everything that you were expecting it to be, based on whatever you’ve seen of it or heard of it to date. Related reading: Matt's review of Dead or Alive 5: Last Round. So I type this as I chow down on a big bowl of wobbly, wobbly, raspberry jelly… I kid you not, but after playing Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 all night (because I love you all so much I wanted to get the review done as quickly as possible, not because I was, uh, mesmerised by the, ah, bounce), I was going a little loopy, and had developed a genuine craving for jelly. If you are interested in the game, please consider purchasing it from Play-Asia, and support DDNet in the process. A copy of this game was provided to us for review from Play-Asia.