To say there have been minor changes over the years to the Dead or Alive series is a not only a mistake, but a misapprehension of years of Tomonobu Itagaki's, and Team Ninja's, hard work. While many took the original's ? ahem ? scenery for granted, many recognized a well thought out fighter. As evolution, we saw DOA2 flourish on the Dreamcast with beautiful graphics that were utterly mind-blowing. Team Ninja made the counter system more complex and grafted a well wrought fighter to some truly bodacious babes. When DOA3 hit some thought the counter system had taken a step backwards, but, in earnest, Team Ninja made the game more forgiving to newcomers while simultaneously giving their fans the kind of gaming love they always do.
The Xbox 360 has received its first real fighter, and what a fighter it is! Dead or Alive 4 is much more than just an improvement over the series: it is refinement, it is discipline, and above all, it is deeper than you'd ever think. DOA has received the ill-gotten title of "simplest fighter ever" from fans of the Tekken and Virtua Fighter ilk. And this title has, at least somewhat, been deserved. There is no denying that having only two buttons for punch and kick can limit the output of each character, but after seeing Dead or Alive 4 in action, and the amazing variety and depth each character possesses, it's certain, for this reviewer at least, that the series has indisputably moved beyond "simple".
DOA4 is deceptively easy to pick up, yet difficult to master. Watching players fight it out online, you'll see that knowing the moves isn't always the key to winning… "Patience, deceit, and anticipation…" were one player's words on how to keep winning. He must have been following his own teachings because the way he was handing us our own heads was done in a ballet of brutality.
DOA4 can be called the most deceptively simple fighter ever. Those of you who have mastered Bayman, Christie, and Brad Wong, for example, know what I mean. 4 is much more than just a culmination of 1, 2 & 3, although 4 does feature all the characters from the aforementioned games and a few new ones: Kokoro, a young Geisha who hones her Ba Ji Quan fighting style to compete in the DOA tournament; Eliot, a young boy and student of Gen Fu combines the "immovable fist" with his own brutal quickness; La Mariposa, a masked wrestler with an eye on defeating Tina; and Spartan-458, a kind-of-hidden character who looks and hits like the Master Chief, but talks like his younger sister.
Those of you who played the originals and are familiar with, say, Ryo Hayabusa, will find many of his moves intact. Still, don't come into DOA 4 thinking it's a pragmatist's dream. Team Ninja worked hard making the game more balanced, crafting each character with a unique fighting style to master, and giving some more move diversity to the roster. For instance Ryo now has teleport moves that are, at first, quite overwhelming, but knowing how to deal with them is only a matter of playing against them. The counter system has returned to its DOA2 goodness, which might confuse new players somewhat, but dedicated players will find it rewarding. Pressing back and X is middle counter, down-back and X is low counter, and up-back and X is high counter. Adding this small bit of complexity is the best decision Team Ninja made for Dead or Alive 4. It keeps the game deep but not unapproachable, fun but fair. And it gives new players and veterans something to work on to perfect.
In time, not only will you learn each character's moves, but, as with games like Tekken 5 and Virtua Fighter 4, their rhythms. One of the more dramatic changes to Dead or Alive 4 is the amount of downtime each character has after a move. And taking into effect that most battles are non-stop punching, kicking, grappling and countering, that's saying a lot. Moves have been given more time to linger, and that means if you mess up, it's your head. This makes battles (especially online) a kind of waiting game, studying what your opponent will do next, hoping you'll guess the right counter and pull it off in time, watching for the correct moment to strike. Battles quickly become very heated and so does the trash-talking.
Graphically DOA4 is gorgeous. The environments are all painstakingly textured and the game plays at a vigorous 60 fps, bells, whistles, kit-n-caboodles– whatever those are. And though the characters still have their 3D anime hotness, they've never looked better. If you play DOA4 on a high definition TV the detail in the hair, fur, and water will look amazing. That's for sure. But it doesn't look to shabby on a regular TV either, though in standard definition it's even tougher to differentiate it from its Xbox brethren. The graphical upgrades are not necessarily mind-blowing, and DOA has always "looked good." It's something Team Ninja can work on for the fifth sequel.
The soundtrack on DOA4 is decent. The best way to describe it would be…urgent. With a frenetic rock/electronic flair, the soundtrack doesn't bore, and it doesn't make you want to mute it either. It's not PGR3 good, but it's better than Perfect Dark Zero's music. The voice acting is still, well, the same. And why not" Why change what they've spent years making. The voices are all ones you'll remember and this time, like the last time, they'll spew ludicrous sayings that reveal part of their character right before they lay the smack down. My favorite is Christie's "Die!" saying; terse and to the point. And this time they left the dialog in Japanese and subtitled it. This makes listening to those sayings all the more bearable.
There is a long list of things to do in DOA4 even though most of them have been carried over from Dead or Alive Ultimate. The most impressive addition is the use of Z points (or Zack points) used to purchase new online avatars (such as skeletons or ninjas, crocodiles or penguins) and accessories for each avatar. You can even purchase new lobbies to organize games in, add things to it like a big-screen TV, or just jump past that stuff and go pick a fight. Dead or Alive 4's online component is refined, offering minimal lag with quite a few contenders-tag team or 1 on 1. One of the cool little additions is that while you wait to fight, you-and everyone else in the channel-can actually watch the current fight going on. It's like a kind of DOA TV. The best thing is you can talk to the people fighting (or those watching) and figure out how to beat the seated player.
If there is anything to complain about in DOA 4, it's the brevity of the story mode, which lasts for about 15 minutes per person (give or take, depending on your familiarity with the game). That and the story's coherency betwixt scenes falls apart somewhere between Zack's antics and Brad Wong's drunken stupor. The only graphical "iffy" moments are when the women's hair flows over their shoulders, which seems to sink into their clothes and doesn't look right.
DOA4 is a beautifully balanced and presented game that represents all of Team Ninja's hard work combining all of what you love about Dead or Alive in here, and more of what you didn't know you'd love but, take my word for it, you will.