Dead or Alive 4 Xbox 360 review

Who exactly is the target audience for the Dead or Alive games, or more specifically this fourth incarnation of the beat’em up series? I’ve been wondering because the game itself seems rather confused. On the one hand there’s the retarded sexuality shown in the obsession with adolescent girls with unfeasibly large bouncing breasts and titillating rendered cutscenes. These make the game seem like DOA4 is aimed at 12-year-old boys whose parents actually have the hang of setting up AOL’s parental controls.

On the other hand the game is perhaps too tough for the average gamer. Button mashing is punished ruthlessly by the AI. The standard difficulty level of the single player story mode will come as a shock to many players, used to the forgiving nature of most beat’em ups on their standard setting. Tecmo claims that the fighting system is aimed at the hardcore, but I think that the difficulty problems go further than that, I believe the single player game has been sadly broken by strange choices made by the developer.

Broken

There are times in the story mode where the AI will suddenly go completely crazy, from the off laying out a helping of smack you can do nothing about. Watching the AI out of the blue pull out a 20-hit combo that perfects you is no fun at all. Neither is being juggled in a way that’s impossible to get out of and perhaps worst of all, the larger emphasis on ground juggles and attacks in DOA4. What these choices by Tecmo boil down to is that the game seems akin to basketball, where one side attacks, then another side attacks. There’s less of an ebb and flow and trading of blows, instead each side gets in a four or five hit combo at a time.

I’ve found that lacking to be honest. You may here people saying the game is too hard. It isn’t, DOA4 just requires some patience and practice, an old fashioned idea from gaming’s past. Defending in the game is now much tougher. There needed to be a change because DOA3 became a succession of counter moves as they were easy to pull off. I think that Team Ninja’s has gone to the other extreme with DOA4 though, the window for successful blocking and countering is now tiny and means that many gamers won’t manage it at all. That’s not to say it’s pure luck, what I’m saying is that the overall set of people who gain the most enjoyment out of the game has been made smaller. A lower difficulty level should have been added.

Counter Productive

I’m not a great fan of the way that you can’t block mid-combo too. Even after plenty of practice most players will often spend time seeing themselves pummelled without any way to respond, there should always be a way to respond, otherwise the player is locked out of the game they’ve paid good money to play. Another thing you may here about the game is that the end-boss is too difficult. It seems this way at first, but honestly even a little practice pays dividends and there’s not too much to worry about after that.

Of course, there will be a small subset of players that love the changes made to the fighing model, for them DOA4 will be a great game. My concern is that Team Ninjas has only made the game for these people and not given a variety of difficulty options. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of depth and detail here to keep many gamers occupied, but the game will be a more frustrating experience for many of them.

Game of Death

That depth comes in a real variety of game modes, all the usual suspects are there such as survival, time attack, sparring etc. There’s a few new additions tagged on here or there. For example, the ability to watch two AI characters fighting has been in the series for quite a while, but now there’s the ability to take pictures of the action and look at them in the game’s photo album. It’s a similar system to Gran Turismo 4, with focal length and shutters speed controls so you can create some rather artistic images.

For me the most welcome change here in DOA4 from the previous games is the interaction with the environments. We’re used to DOA arenas offering dramatic locations for combat, but it’s been taken a step further now. There’s a beach market location where clattering one’s opponent into a stall will see produce rolling around on the floor. While leaping over fences and tables to engage in combat I had a flashback to the promises made for The Boxer on PS2 all those years ago, finally there’s a game that can live up to that kind of action.

Spit & Polish

As you’d expect, the graphics do look rather splendid. The little details impress the most such as the quality of the water in the rope-bridge arena, or the neon-lit streets of Las Vegas. The same level of attention hasn’t gone into all the arenas but the game looks good no matter which venue you’re in.. The fighters too look rather good, the costumers especially are super detailed. I don’t think Tecmo has gone far enough with the character design. While some of the male fighters boast rippled skin with veins, the female characters till have a basic anime look to them which doesn’t match up to the graphical detail shown elsewhere. There’s something strange about seeing a character in a very detailed outfit that has rather uniform and under-detailed skin and facial features.

Anyway let’s condense all these thoughts into a conclusion about DOA4. It’s a good game, but nothing more. It’s certainly not great. The single-player game isn’t very well balanced for most gamers and at times seems rather unfair. Many players, including friends of mine have reported lag in the online multiplayer game, though it’s always been smooth for me. I wanted much more from DOA4 than a great graphics demo for the Xbox 360. If you’re a hardcore follower of the franchise I’m sure you’ll really enjoy this game, but as an experience for most gamers it’s not quite what the doctor ordered.