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Dead or Alive 4 defines the fighting experience on next generation consoles with the first tournament fighter on Xbox 360. Dead or Alive 4 once again raises the bar in both online and offline fighting, with 3D high definition graphics and sound, online capabilities via Xbox Live (featuring large scale global online tournaments, increased worldwide simultaneous online play, detailed scoreboards, clans and more), new incredible interactive stages, and an all star line-up of old and new favorite characters (with new costumes and storylines). The fighting system has been overhauled, allowing even more mastery and strategy of your favorite character, including the most complex DOA countering system yet!

Genre: Fighting

Publisher: Tecmo

Developer: Team Ninja

Online Play: 16 Versus/ 2 Co-op

Local Play: 4 Versus/ 2 Co-op

December 28, 2005 –
Team Ninja might work in mysterious and confusing ways, but the well-known Japanese development team always delivers tough, beautiful, and compelling games. Dead or Alive 3, Ninja Gaiden, and its re-make, Ninja Gaiden Black have all spoken to and been targeted to hardcore players willing to put in extra time to reap the riches found deep inside them. And now Dead or Alive 4, the team’s first creation on Xbox 360, takes the fighting series to new, divergent levels with Tomonobu Itagaki’s infamous brand of knockout graphics and a much more serious level of fighting.

At first glance, Dead or Alive 4 might seem like more of the same…with better graphics. The visuals comprise relatively similar looking characters heightened in detail with backgrounds that will make you look twice. But graphics don’t a fighting game make. The Dead Or Alive series always has been criticized for its simplistic counter system and lack of depth. Dead Or Alive Ultimate was adept at taking the game online, but didn’t provide the long-term fighting experience for which gamers were hungry. Dead or Alive 4 addresses every issue thrown at the previous iterations in the series with varying degrees of success, tackling everything from the counter system to cancels, the ground game, blocks, and interactions with the environment.

But once you get past the button-mashing phase and are finished enjoying the novelty of having a new Xbox 360 game, you’ll find the game has changed pretty significantly. The counter system is less forgiving and will definitely challenge fans of the series, especially those fond of DOA3. This affects every other area of the game. The harder characters to master are even more powerful now, and there is more of a ground game, in addition to careful use of the backgrounds. And the online game is definitely improved. The question, however, remains unanswered — will you like the changes?

You too can capture screens and save them with as much blur effect as your want.Hey, Good Looking

In this first wave of Xbox 360 games, one is hard pressed to argue that Team Ninja’s final version of Dead or Alive 4 isn’t one of, if not the best, looking game on the juvenile system thus far. Anyone worth their salt making fighting games these days has to endeavor to match the intensity and layered fighting styles of Sega’s Virtua Fighter, the profound technical depth of Namco’s Tekken, or the smooth grace and immense fun of Soulcalibur — all of which look excellent on the current generation of systems. DOA4 does a few things extremely well, while remaining relatively static in others, but does indeed move the graphic factor up a notch in this next generation.

For starters, the speed with which each of the characters moves is incredible. This game blazes away at 60 FPS with nary a hitch, and the art team worked diligently to create smooth animations that blend between every move, fall, throw, and taunt. With the powerful Xbox 360 grinding away in the background, Itagaki and team have created a fighter that will satisfy your twitchy split-second demands without any issues. Oh yeah, and DOA4 loads in four seconds. Yes, it will load in four seconds from any mode of play.

The characters, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. It’s not that they aren’t good looking. They are. They’re intricately detailed and imagined with flourish and style. Kasumi, Leifang, and Ayane, for instance, show off noticeably flowing silky hair. All the characters display special moves and superbly motion-captured animations that are worth watching repeatedly. When the characters grapple each other you won’t see the clipping or body melding seen so often in wrestling games. These characters grab each other with precision and eye-catching animations. Characters such as Ryu Hayabusa, Jann Lee and Bayman all show increased musculature and heightened emotional intensity. Bungie’s Spartan-458 looks excellent too, fully suited in specialized Mjolnir armor.

But none of the characters have made a significant graphic jump in design above their predecessors. The women still look like satin dolls and the guys like burly thugs. It’s not a big gripe, but one that’s worth discussing a little given the advances in current videogame facial expressions and potential emotional output. The character design is more of an amplification of the previous roster’s clean looks than a major shift or advancement. And when compared to the spiffy backgrounds, they stand in even greater contrast, looking simple and unrealistic. Perhaps that’s just a peeve of my own, because the game overall really does look great.

On the other hand, from both a visual and a functional standpoint, the background environments are terrifically designed. Following the dynamic set of environments from DOA3, this year’s model features levels that highlight destructible objects, exceedingly gorgeous effects, multiple breakaway sections, moving backgrounds, and animated creatures and vehicles. There are dozens of examples. Waterfall Valley, Kyoto in Bloom, and Temple on the Mountain boast the game’s gorgeous photorealism. The trees still look like cross-polygons when viewed under a microscope, but on first and second inspection, they’re damn good looking. Falling leaves and cherry blossoms create a feeling of place and realism. You’ll constantly see up-close focus and distance blurring working all the time. And the river water looks and moves with impressive motion. The Las Vegas level, Gambler’s Paradise, shows off water, too, only you’ll see reflections with more intensity: puddles on the street reflect the city’s bright lights and structures with impressive realism, while also affecting the fights themselves.

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