Uncharted: Golden Abyss might have been the worst thing to happen to the PlayStation Vita. Before you get out your pitchforks (I'm looking at you, Greg Miller), allow me to explain.

See, in the Vita's early life, Golden Abyss got many of us believing the hype about the power of its internals. Namely, that it could produce visuals that approached the PlayStation 3's in scope and detail. As a result we've seen many devs, Team Ninja included, push the Vita too hard, sacrificing smooth framerates for console-caliber visual fidelity. But after the misstep that was the Vita port of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, it seems Team Ninja has found its way again, because Dead or Alive 5 Plus delivers in a big way, thanks in large part to the team’s decision to forego eye-melting visual effects in favor of preserving breakneck speed.I wrote the review for Dead or Alive 5 when it hit consoles late last year, and I liked it... a lot. The short version is that it's the latest and greatest of Tecmo's fast-paced 3D fighting games. Featuring a unique countering system, and dynamic multi-tiered stages, DOA has always been Tekken's crazy, unruly cousin from across town. The original version of DOA5 built upon that foundation to add some depth while also wisely scaling back a bit of its juvenile fixation on mammary glands. DOA5+ retains nearly every mode and feature from the original, tacks on a few new ones, and most importantly, plays every bit as well as it did on console.After playing Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus and seeing the framerate from the console version get chopped in half, I was pleasantly surprised to see DOA5+ run at blistering 60 frames per second at all times, even during the blockbuster background changes featuring trainwrecks and exploding helicopters. Of course, some concessions had to be made in terms of texture detail and anti-aliasing, but while the lower fidelity is noticeable at times, Team Ninja did an excellent job of prioritizing where to make cuts. Character models look terrific, as do the more prominent sections of the backgrounds; areas you tend to focus on less, like the ground, bear the brunt of the downgrade. The result is a game that runs as silky as it did on PS3 and 360, while retaining much of the original's visual beauty.The exhaustive set of bells and whistles surrounding the fisticuffs on the immobile consoles is impressive to say the least, and DOA5+ makes even fewer compromises here. Only online lobbies and the ability to track and challenge specific human opponents are left on the cutting room floor. Facebook integration, replay downloads, online training, and all the rest are present and accounted for, backed by some excellent new additions.The already-incredible training has gotten better, offering up even more real-time telemetry on your moves as you make them. Additionally, the tutorial, which was previously meted out in bite-size morsels during the story mode, is now offered separately, conveniently putting everything that new players need to know in one place. Combo trials have been added as well, and while the examples given are far from optimal, they do give a good idea of what's possible, and how to build combinations of your own. Cross-save and cross-play are godsends and they both work without any hassle. The only dud is the new "touch fighting mode," where you use swipes and taps to fight in first person. It's every bit as much of a hot mess as you're thinking. Dodgy gesture detection and an impossibly disorienting perspective make it hard to imagine who thought this was going to be a good time. Still, it's an inconsequential hiccup in what's otherwise a better-than-feature-complete port of DOA5.