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Review: Dead or Alive 4 |
Boobies. There, I said it. This game has jiggly, wiggly, biggly titties. Girls in skimpy outfits thrust their legs in the air and let you know, fairly often, what exactly their panties look like, only to have another woman grab them by the legs and stuff her head under the first female’s shorty-short skirt. The game is mostly women, and none of them are overweight, super muscular, or even the slightest bit appealing to feminist ideals. They want to grow up to be housewives and give you blowjobs seven times a day while cooking you dinner each and every night. I happen to like it that way, and my Y chromosome agrees. Okay, now that’s out of the way, lets move on.
Dead or Alive 4 is the latest game in the decade old series about women with jiggly breasts and the men who love to pound their faces into cement. If you played any of the past incarnations of the series, you know what to expect. But now the game is thrust deep into the great frontier of high definition.
But if you haven’t played any of the past games in the series, what the hell are you doing on this site? *sigh* Fine…the Dead or Alive series is known for its ample females in revealing costumes as well as pretty looking character models and special effects as opposed to deep, complex gameplay. So does that change in this iteration? Hell no.
Well, okay I lied in the last paragraph, almost…the character models don’t look like any kind of step forward for the series, which is a shame as the Xbox 360 can definitely do more. The costumes and environments look fine, though they still don’t quite reach that next-gen standard we’ve all been seeing in other 360 games.
This game is still a tiny step forward from the last two DOA games, with the help of high resolution textures. Let’s face it, you see this game at 720p or 1080p and you know this couldn’t be done before. But sadly at 480p, or 480i for that matter, the game doesn’t look much better than what the first Xbox could do. Skin still looks like plastic; hair still clumps and slithers around rather than flowing like it should. But don’t take this as a huge strike against the visuals. It still looks good, just not as good as it could on a system as powerful as the Xbox 360.
Though the visuals don’t quite reach expectations, sound delivers well. Yells, grunts, impacts, and even roars all sound like they should. The game makes use of the 360’s 5.1 surround sound by placing ambient noises, as well as various people, vehicles, and creatures around you. All the impacts make great sounding “thuds” and explosions that people with a good subwoofer can really enjoy.
Voices are all in Japanese, no exceptions. This is a good thing as most English dubs of fighting games tend to…oh what’s that word? Oh right, “blow.” As usual for Japanese fighting games, you’ll run into some odd quotes and good times had by all. Par for the course is the best way to describe it.
As for the music, it’s not very memorable. Well, generic sounds more accurate. Fortunately you can just input any music you have into the game through the various means of streaming music onto the 360. I suggest something fairly fast paced and aggressive. Either way, unlike in Sonic R, it’s not going to kill you to listen to the in-game music.
Controls are just like the past games on the Xbox, only they work better since the 360 pad is far more comfortable to use. Most combos are simple to pull off and counters are as easy as back, forward, down-back, or up-back + X, based on where your enemy’s attack hits. This game definitely won’t be known for vast depth and complexity, though the game finally starts taking steps in the right direction. Characters have a wider variety of moves, obviously, and you’ll find that hammering punch over and over is only going to get you countered. But my favorite addition to the game is the fact that you can no longer counter the counter of a countered counter that has been countered after being countered by a counter.
The game speed has gone up quite a bit in this iteration from DOA: Ultimate, which makes the pacing in matches better and also helps in shortening the window of opportunity to pull off a counter. This helps make the fighting very intense with the addition of the game’s large variety of exaggerated moves and the many dangers that lie in the different environments of the game.
For example, you can knock your opponent over a fallen tree trunk or a table, then run up to the mentioned object, springboard off it and deliver yet another hard hit to your enemy. Or, while fighting in the middle of the road in a Las Vegas-esque strip, you can knock your opponent into oncoming traffic for added damage, but you could also be run over by a car if you’re not careful. Better yet, you could knock your opponent through a glass window, watch him or her fall a story onto the broken glass, and then knock them down a staircase.
The multi-tiered stages are back with a vengeance. Most stages are huge, making it fairly fun to actually just go into practice mode and just explore. There are still some small stages that are mostly there to support tag team play. Sadly, there are only three of those, which makes tag mode get old fairly fast. More on tag mode later.
What really helps the game from getting old is online play. In fact, I feel this is the main selling point for the game. The online play works great, though you may run into lag if someone in your group has a bad connection, but that’s to be expected. In online mode you’re able to customize a little avatar character by earning points in online play to buy new skins and accessories. You can even earn a special lobby where you can send messages, watch people play, and just hang around when not fighting. And if you’re too lazy to just unlock them in story mode or time attack, you can just buy the costumes using points you earn in online play.
Another thing the DOA series is known for is having a story mode that contains odd dialogue and other situations that’ll make you scratch your head and wonder what the hell is going on. The best thing to do in this mode is remind yourself that this is a fighting game and nobody plays fighting games for the storyline. But really, two women fighting over a head of cabbage? Only in the world of DOA.
Aside from online play and story mode, there’s your standard Time Attack and Survival modes, practice, and versus. All can be played single player or with a tag partner. The tag function also allows more than just two people play at once, which is an interesting feature. All in all, there’s plenty here to keep you busy for quite a while.
The characters are all pretty good - hot chicks, ninjas, and nuclear tellatubbies fill in the ranks with fantastically exaggerated fighting styles that are sure to bring a smile to any sadist’s face. There are far fewer costumes in this game than in DOA: Ultimate, but there are way more characters to help even that issue out. The most costumes any character has is eight, which is a tiny number for the DOA series, and there don’t seem to be any downloadable costume packs in sight. Even former boss Tengu of DOA2 returns as a playable character this time.
This brings me to the boss of this game. Alpha-152 is a whore. She’s a jelly-filled, translucent, raspberry-flavored tart. She has to be the cheapest boss in 3D fighting game history. Luckily she’s not as cheap as most SNK bosses, but not by enough. I hate her, I want her to die, also she’s a clone of Kasumi or some shit like that. Point is, she’s a bitch and I am severely butt hurt that I have to face her most of the time just to unlock a freaking costume. Luckily she can be beaten, and hopefully before your controller flies through your brand new $4,000 plasma screen TV.
So by now you’re most likely thinking, “Well, Doctor, that sounds like something I might enjoy, but is it worth throwing down $400 for new hardware for?” I’m not even going to kid you, hell no. If you want this game but aren’t really interested in anything else the 360 has to offer, you’re shit out of luck, son. But if you were planning on getting a 360 anyway or already have one and are a long time fan of the series or fighting games in general, it is worth checking out.
If you just like boobies… you have the internet, go look at some porn.
