Yes, the Dead or Alive series is back with its latest iteration, Dead or Alive 5, set to debut on October 9 this year, and it has proven that it’s got more than just pert breasts this time round.

“We think this is the future of fighting games,” said producer Yosuke Hayashi as he debuted the term ‘fighting entertainment’ and explained how making a game like DOA5 could expand the market and let more people enjoy fighting games.

DOA5 is described as a game for both casual and hardcore gamers. While you can play it in typical 3D fighter fashion, there are (default) options that make it more entertaining than serious.

For instance, characters now have dynamic appearances. Throw Leifang on the floor long enough and she’ll get smudged and dirty. Toss her into a pool of water and she’ll come out dripping. Fight with her hard enough and she’ll start to sweat.

The environment is also more dynamic than ever, with cargo cranes and the like swinging in the background. You can toss opponents into walls to open up access to new arenas, and yes, making use of the environment to damage an opponent does hit harder than a normal attack would.

The camera angles of DOA5 are also more interactive. Even simple heavy punches come with exaggerated camerawork, upping the ante on the game’s entertainment factor. You can turn the camera angles off for more serious gaming, though, since they actually drag out the game with their lengthy sequences.

It’s not just the dynamism of the game that surprised us. DOA5 is also adding an online dojo, or training clinic, to spice up multiplayer. Gamers will be able to chat with friends via voice chat – no more of that clunky on-screen keyboard input – while training together in the dojo. It doesn’t just make for more social activity; the voice chat function will be a great help to players just picking up the game, tying back to Hayashi-san’s vision of opening the fighting game market to more people.

DOA5 will also support connectivity to Facebook, via your Xbox LIVE account. You’ll be able to upload match results to Facebook. The game will also feature an online leaderboard, and will let you watch replays of other matches online as well.

As the first DOA game without any involvement from series creator Tomonobu Itagaki, DOA5 will have big shoes to fill. We do, however, think it’ll be able to do more than that when it finally releases. DOA5 is also the first game in the series to debut simultaneously across multiple platforms.