Dead or Alive 4 Review
I have always loved fighting games. My fondest gaming memories take me back to days of the Street Fighter series, Soul Calibur II, Mortal Kombat, etc. Mastering chains of combos, or just trying to find new and creative ways to blend moves that have no business following each other. Now, as we stand edge of the next-gen era, one game over the last month has stolen many hours of my life, and that game is probably the best fighter I have ever played in my life; Dead or Alive 4.
I should probably begin by saying I have never played Dead Or Alive 1, 2, or Ultimate. The time I spent on Dead or Alive 3 was on a store a demo, and a 5 minute sparring session I played on my cousin's XBox, and therefore, I'm looking at Dead or Alive 4 with virgin eyes and fresh perspective.
If Looks Could Kill...
The very first time you boot Dead or Alive 4 up, I recommend letting the game sit for a moment, so you can go past the title screen and watch the demo movie. It acts as a nice opening cut-scene and a kick-ass music video (Aerosmith's "Eat The Rich" plays as several DOA4 cast members beat the crap out of each other through various areas, and Kokoro does a sort of exercise in a beautiful kimono, that she can't actually wear in battle, unfortunately).
Graphically, Team Ninja's latest Dead or Alive is amazing. Whether you're on an HDTV, or standard def, this game looks like a visual smorgasbord from which your eyes can feast upon for days on end; from the beautiful rendered Waterfall Valley (my favorite stage), with its distant waterfalls, lush surrounding forest, forging bunny rabbits, and beautiful, reflective stream, to the arena like DWA Ring which is host to hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators who will hold up character specific signs, and even boo if the fighters become inactive for too long, this game will have you taking teeth shattering drop kicks to the face just because you were too busy gawking at an animated Dead or Alive Volleyball billboard in the background on the Gambler's Paradise level.
Many of the levels have destructible or interactive elements to them. The Mountain Top Temple for example is home to some walls and pots that can be broken, also doling out extra damage, by nailing your adversary into them . Reach the farthest level of this stage, and you'll end up a large room, with two gongs, and some lamps in the ceiling; throw your opponent into the gongs and hear them ring. Find a way to bump the lamps, and you'll hear a neat little bump, and see them sway accordingly.
But, the true showcase piece in terms of levels is the Nassau Station, aka, The Halo Level. This stage is setup as an homage to the first level in Halo 2, and is best experienced with the Spartan (whom you unlock at the same time, more on that later). Slam her into one of the metal rails, or canisters lying around, and hear a nice vibrating clank as she collides. Throw someone into one of the force shield generators, and watch them spark and change from blue to red and back again if you repeat the process.
The characters in the game look better than ever, and the girls are as bouncy as they've been in recent outings, though, compared to the outstanding environments, the characters have an almost living doll or action figure look to their hair and skin. Though this was intentional to give them a sort of Anime inspired look, it still looks odd in comparison with the everything else.
While the characters all look amazing, they're not perfect: A few glitches crop up here in there with some of the long haired females; Kokoro, Kasumi, and Lei-Fang all suffer from an odd clipping effect at times where their hair or draping clothes will appear to phase into their bodies. While this is a minor nitpick with all consideration, it's still a little strange to see.
In battle, each character's personality shines through with wonderful, well transitioned movements that many times look as natural as you moving your own hand; from Kasumi's quick, speedy jabs and acrobatic maneuvers, to Bass' lumbering heavy swings, and brutal throws all come off looking amazing (in some cases, frightening, once you see how much damage they do).
Again, the stand out here is the Spartan. Because she doesn't have any outfits that reveal even an inch of skin (actually, she only has one, but in many different colors, including Storm Trooper White & Black), she's saved from the plastic looking exterior that many of the other characters have. Because of this, she looks absolutely amazing when viewed up close. Her armor, based on Master Chief's own combat gear, every inch of armor is highly detailed and stunningly rendered.
Though her move set can be likened to a cross between Bass and
Bayman, with a touch of Ein/Hitomi thrown in, she's got some pretty nice moves of her own, such as the Plasma Grenade Stick where she shoves a plasma grenade into your gut, kicks you away and lets it explode. Looks particularly nasty when done as a final blow; no added effects, but the sheer fact that you're opponent has been basically blown up, does make the move the closest thing to a fatality in DOA.Make Some Noise
The sound in DOA4 is, like the graphics, great, with a few minor problems. Every smack, every slam, every twist sounds gut wrenchingly delightful, with ambient and reactionary noise pouring out from almost every stage of the game. From the sounds of the ocean, and flocking seagulls, to the smashing of clay pots and ringing of gongs, every sound effect in this game is a sonic treat.
Voice acting in Dead or Alive 4 is almost completely done in Japanese with English subtitles, though if you're use watch a lot of subbed Japanese films/anime, or grew up being satisfied knowing that the extent of your Japanese consisted of "HADOKEN!" you'll be able to get around it.
However, where things fall apart in the sound department is in the music. Every other stage in the game comes complete with randomly generated techno themes, poptastic dance beats, or epic, almost orchestral songs, laced with just a hint of techno beats
Some stages, such as the Crash Club will only get one particular set of songs specific to that area in order to keep the mood of the area (While on the Halo level for example, you get the theme from Halo 2 which sounds kick ass in this game). Even further, some characters, such as the unlockable Leon, will prompt special songs (play against him in story mode to hear a nice middle-eastern theme tune).
The biggest problem is that the songs get rather repetitive and annoying, prompting you to activate the 360's personal soundtrack feature. However, as Fighting game soundtracks go, this is still a little better than norm, and is enjoyable for what it is.
The usage of two Aerosmith songs may seem odd at first, but their tone and way in which they're used actually works out pretty nicely.
Fists of Fury
Now, of course, we all know the game looks and sounds great, but that's not what we care about, now is it? We care about the gameplay, which I'm glad to say does not disappoint...sort of. Your life expectancy in this game is short, no matter what, even at largest health and longest rounds, most smoothly running fights won't last longer than a minute or so, making the game fast and devastating as you annihilate (or become annihilated by) your opponent. While the game boosts a variety of modes, they all boil down to mano-e-mano (or girl-on-girl, or girl-on-mano) action.
The default controls work nicely, with a few buttons mapped to do combination presses (P+K, F+K, etc.), The combos, though somewhat complex, are easy enough to learn for any seasoned Fighting fan, and forgiving enough to let newbies few like they just did something really cool. However, the XBox 360's D-Pad is not always the best at making precise movements and can get frustrating for some, when trying to pull of complex directional movements. Still, get two fighters who've leaned the combos and how to work the system, you'll have a fight more intense than an fight scene from any movie you've ever seen. While the game is easy to learn, it's difficult to master and rewards you for using thought out and level headed tactics, over impulsive flails.
What makes randomly tossing out punches and kicks left and right dangerously unpleasant in Dead or Alive 4 is the counter system. While your opponent may be driven into a defensive stance, if they can guess (or in some cases see) if you're attack is coming in high, middle, or low, they'll have a chance to counter and doll out a nice amount of punishment. The downside however, is if your counter misses, or they decide to grab you, then the landing attack does 20 to 40% more damage. Nicer still though, is the game's nice delay system. If you time your combos right, you can delay certain moves within the combo, and expect someone to counter you can delay them just outside of the counter window, or switch to another attack to throw them off.
While the characters display their own unique strengths and weaknesses, there are some questions about how the character's are balanced. Some characters such as Ein seem to be a bit too strong at teams (one counter he has takes off a considerable amount of health even at Largest) but when you
consider he's a bit on the slow side, especially when compared to characters like Christie and Kasumi, it's easy to see the trade off. Still, you have to wonder if he's not just a wee bit over powered. Otherwise, the game feels great, and once you're skilled at the game, and have better understanding of the game's mechanics, you'll be able to learn characters relatively easy.Each character has his or own fighting style, and while some characters have similar styles (Gen Fu and Eliot, or Ein and Hitomi for example) no two fighters work the same, or have 100% identical move sets, giving each fighter his or her own style and personality. Like fast and quick strikes over slow, lumbering power attacks? You're covered. Like throwing people of guard with hard to predict movements? You're covered. Like beating the living crap out of someone with heavy, hard hitting slams that come down on you like a sky diving sumo wrestler with a busted chute? You're covered.
Dead or Alive 4 has a nice array of modes, such as Versus, Survival, Time Attack, Story (where you'll spend much of your offline time unlocking costumes, and characters) as well as a sparring mode. The Sparring mode is one of the areas where the game could use a little work. While it's nice and helps you learn each character's moves, the fact that you cannot input attacks and have the game replicate them so you can enhance your countering and evasive skills is a bit of a oversight. Equally annoying is the fact that while there is a list of combos that you can program your chosen dummy to pull of, it's short, and mostly consists of their most basic combos. If you're going to give us some, why not all?
The crown and glory of the game and the most aggravating is DOA Online. From here, you can quickly jump into open lobbies and join random games in progress, create your own game session, check rankings or even use the earnings you've won from online battles (Zack Bucks) at Zack's Shop to buy avatars, items and outfits for them, costumes for your in game characters (which saves you the trouble of playing through story mode and time attack to unlock that school girl costume or new paint job for the Spartan you've been wanting) or even new lobbies.
While this is all cool, and adds a nice little Pokemon-like aspect to the game (Gotta Buy 'Em All!) It's also the game's biggest headache. Once in a lobby, you have the option to hang out in the lobby and watch a match, or join up and watch it at full screen. Problem is, you can't join a match and hang out in the lobby. Quiting the match means losing your spot in line. In large lobbies, this can mean waiting a while. While this does have it's benifits, as it means if you have to step away for more than few moments, you can just duck out to the lobby without having to leave the game. Still, they should have found a way for you to stay in lobby choose to watch at full screen or the lobby's tv, without forcing you to do one or the other.
Another gripe is that while the game can run smoothly if the 2 fighters are have a perfect connection, there tends to be problems with lag if someone is downloading having a bad day with their connection speeds. What's worse is that this can have a huge impact on gameplay, since you have to time your movements so carefully. You'll often find yourself pulling out moves to late or too early because you couldn't control your combos inside of lag.
Another problem is that, while the game runs great most of the time, there are few instances where collision detection goes weird, and you'll counter, block grab, or hit someone, and the attack may or may not register, or you'll be too far from someone, and the attack will still hit.
However, this doesn't happen enough to effect the game's ability to be enjoyed online, unless you're extremely picky about that sort of thing. While it does suck, its rare enough that you can get around it.
Other glitches include the Grading glitches where you may jump or fall in rank. Those trying to get the SS achievement may become frustrated after working their way up to an S, only to fall down to an F- somehow, and those looking to make money to by that new Ninja avatar maybe become infuriated to see themselves jump up to an SS, and are no longer be able to make money as quickly as they once were (the grade system is point based; meaning the more points someone has than you the more money and points you get per fight; SS's whooping up on an A- get a sorry 150 grade/zack bucks per fight plus winning streak bonus).
Still, all complaints aside, these are gripes are nothing that can't be fixed with patches and downloads, and are rare enough that they don't become a constant problem. Weather you want to buy the game for the graphics and use it to show off your 360 for your friends, you're looking for an amazing fighting game, or just want a nice social game to play online (some of the most fun I had, and most of the friends I've made, over the last few weeks has been in the lobbies of DOA4), Dead or Alive 4 is a great gmae, that should not be missed.
Graphics: 9.5
Sound: 9.0
Presentation: 8.5
Gameplay: 9.5
Overall: 9.5
posted by Teksuo Hikari @ 7:22 PM
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XBox Live, Microsoft's online service for the XBox and XBox 360, is awesome when it works. When it doesn't work, weird things happen, such as people not being able to join games, or having weird connection issues, such as with Dead or Alive 4's 3 Black Bars, where 2 people can't connect and are unable to see or hear each other in lobbies. A friend of mine, fed up with the problem, found and a fix and posted the following solution on the XBox 360 forums: