Review: Dead or Alive 4
This is one of the elite fighting series out there, right up there with Street Fighter, Tekken, and Soul Caliber, though it is my opinion that the series has gone down hill since DOA 2, since I felt that DOA 3 was a button mashers dream, but still a good game. Will Dead Or Alive 4 (DOA 4) bring redemption to the DOA series in my eyes, or could it possibly make the series worse?
Story:
Each character has their own story, like Tina wants to win the tournament to use it as a platform to launch her career as a rock star, which of course Bass wants to stop. Kasumi wants to discover what Helena and the company DOA tech have been hiding. You get the general idea, bunch of fighters, same crummy story lines, and one big boss to beat in order to achieve their goals....
Graphics:
Graphics are as always the high point of this series of games and this is still the case here, but is it just me but there is not a whole lot of difference graphically between DOA 3 and DOA4, or even from DOA Ultimate. The graphics are beautiful and wonderfully rendered and the stages are beautiful to look at but you will be focusing so much on the fighting that you will hardly have the time to enjoy them. What upsets me is that it looks like they didn't update the character models any, just the clothes that they are wearing. I mean the outfits look great but you would have thought that maybe that would have fixed the clipping issue the occurs with the Ladies with long hair that was something that bugged me in DOA3 and Ultimate, and it seems that they didn't even bother to upgrade the player models from what they were in DOA Ultimate on the Xbox, this is the Next Gen folks you really should fix the small things like this.
Music:
The music in the DOA series has always been substandard in my opinion, and the voice overs are still abysmal, I would have hoped that maybe they could have found some voice actors from each native country to voice each character; I can understand Kasumi, Ayane, and Hyabusa speaking Japanese, or broken English, but Tina and Bass whom are American come on guys, I think it would be cool to hear Helena speaking French, or Hitomi speaking German. That is only a personal gripe though with gaming in general not just this game, but since the music is so poor in this game I would rather delve into a rant on native tongues spoken in gaming than waste a minute on the music of this game, and sadly there are few sound tracks that are worse than this one.
Control:
Good Lord Almighty, I may have to rant again here. One of the saving graces of DOA3 and Ultimate was the easy to trigger counter system, which gave many of the new players to the series a chance to actually play on the same level as heavily experienced players, and counter your way out of being cornered in a stage making a loss by where you got cornered by an opponent rare, but DOA 4 removed this countering system that is now complex enough to scare away even veteran DOA fans, after having played this with many of my friends whom were huge fans of DOA 3, they now find it hard to play or even enjoy DOA4 because the countering system is so difficult to pull off. So expect to loose a lot of fights, and let your frustration grow, because you got cornered in a tight space and can't get out over and over again.
Design:
You know what this game seems only like a tech upgrade from DOA ultimate with 3 more characters, an old boss now playable, and extremely difficult to reach XBL achievements. Even the games "surprise" hidden character seems tacked on to feel like hey we got Master Chief in our fighting game, come play this game cause we have run out of gimmicks to sell a game we have sold 2 other times on the Xbox, and still justify a 60 price tag.
Hardcore DOA fans this is for you, everyone else stay away, far away, unless you are a glutton for punishment. Pick up DOA 3 for the Xbox which can also be played on your 360, I am pretty sure it can be had for dirt cheap now, and provides far more entertainment. you know that or download Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting off of XBL
Graphics
9/10
Game play
5/10
Sound
4/10
Fun factor
5/10
Tilt
4/10
Average score
5.4 out of 10.0
Dead or Alive 4:
Pros:
Scantly clad Pretty girls :)
Great Graphics
Multiplayer is still fun
Die hard fans will eat this up
Cons:
The cheapest final boss yet.
Graphics could have been better
Changes in the fighting system are not welcome changes
Cornering is more common than ever
Only for the Die Hard fan