Dead or Alive 4
Released: 2005
Dead or Alive is a popular fighting game exclusive for only the x-box 360. As normally their graphics have increased and this one has a slightly different story for the main character Helena. Helena, now takes over Donovan's (her fatheres) DOA tech company. As following, the old characters come back to the tournament with various reasons.
In this release the favorite old characters are all back with three new characters, Kokoro, a japanese soon-to-be geisha, and a european boy named Elliot, Gen Fu's student, and La Mariposa, real name Lisa as a wrestler.
Also, there is a guest fighter Nicole (from halo) and two old characters, Tengu and Ein are brought back to this one.
The Good: Many characters are available. Not much but around 20 or so. (?) The graphics look great. Character moves seem to flow better than expected now and the speed is great as well. The game hasn't really changed much (tag team is still there of course). The way the character looks when injured.
Character reactions are better than before. Like they might roll around on the floor or hold their stomach or shake their head. If kicked in the face the way they spin around and it's more realistic.
The Bad: The hair for some of the characters like Kokoro look so fake it's terrible. Some moments...kokoro especially and a few others almost look like dolls. However some like Kasumi's hair looks fine.
Another bad thing is the counter system/Grab system. Surely it's more complicated and that can be fun but the amount of times I spent trying to get Hayabusa to do his 'regular' spin in the air grab is ridiculous. And the counter is cooler moves just that they made it so complicated that sometimes its hard to counter at all. It's something I listed as Bad but its OK but not something I terribly liked.
The ending movies however were completely ridiculous. They had nothing to do with the story in most cases or just looked ridiculous. Another thing is how much the girls were exposed in this game. The only good ending movie was Helena b/c she actually made sense. It wasn't something random and silly like Kasumi dreaming she was the little mermaid singing and then caught in a net. >_>
And finally, one more bad thing I'd have to add that's coming to mind....the costumes. Guys get up to around 4 costumes girls get up to 8 or less costumes but more than guys (that's fine). But then here was the bad part: the costumes were ugly and ridiculious with only two good costume per character). Some examples? Simple.
Kokoro had about 4 school girl costumes all that looked ugly. Kasumi had about 3 or something and the other costumes were OK. The costume creativity was a little low. Some were fine though. I didn't like Ayane but Lei fang was fine. It's just they shoudl have given more costumes like the ones from DOA 3 and DOA ultimate 2.
Now about the storyline for characters. It was a little lame. Although helena's story was really good and all. The others were OK. The ninja's were out to destroy DOA tech (not new but OK that's ok. They need to do that so that was alright). But the the other characters didn't have anything. Lei fang is still stalking jan lee. >_> Hitomi...just wants to be strong and bring Ein back (?) But Ein is really Hayate so that really never happened...What DOA should have done was...somehow have all their characters relate to something and take part in the main storyline. Or give them a good side storyline of their own.
Rate: 6/10
Simply b/c I think the only good thing was that the game was faster and more flowing but there wasn't anything really new to the game. The one thing was playing story mode and that was the fun part, but the endings didn't have any meanings. Only Helena and I think that looked really great though. Now that I'm done with the game the only fun part of putting it in is to play survival mode. But that's exactly what I basically did in the other DOA's so...nothing new or exciting. It's just a game with a bad story line but good graphics.
