Dead or Alive 4 / Games / Web Wombat

When a button combination such as Y, B, B, X, Y, Y greets your eyes, there's usually only a few games types that it could encompass - a dancing game, a telephone simulator or a fighting game. And luckily for me, in this instance it's a violent fighting game, because the last time I played Dance Dance Revolution I ended up 'dancing' my way into corrective surgery.

The button combination is from Dead or Alive 4, a rather polished hand-to-hand fighting game available now on the Xbox360 that pits a pair of fighters against one another in close combat. No knives, no guns, no kinky shit. Just hands, feet and... well, okay, some kinky content in there.

And before you ask, I'm referring smosob (read it backwards), the one thing that many videogames have relied upon for male patronage for as long as the industry has been around. Think Tomb Raider's Lara Croft, Perfect Dark Zero's Joanna Dark and who could forget Namco's Mappy from the old NES games?

But sex will only sell a few million copies to begin with, so what happens once the really desperate gamers have maxed out their credit cards, and the visual tricks wear thin and all these excitable males get girlfriends, or gynoids? Well, it's simple dear readers - the games ablate into obscurity. Bouncing breasts are intriguing for a while, I don't mind admitting that, but the game must be fun to play, with engaging mechanics and good longevity. And if it's relying solely on its sex appeal, something's gotta give, so what's the rub with Dead or Alive 4?

It's got game, and plenty of scope for the long run, and is possibly the best game from Team Ninja in the series thus far, though the fighting game engine hasn't changed dramatically since DoA 3. There are two attack buttons (kick and punch) and block button and grab button, and between these each of the game's 18 characters have literally hundreds of different moves. It's got a lot of scope this game, and truth be told, some of the moves are very cool to watch particularly the grabs, as there are a couple of wrestlers in there who have some bone-breaking holds and locks.

The game is instantly accessible - absolutely anyone can play this game as button mashing can be effective against less accomplished players - and that's a good thing to get non-gamers and loiterers hooked. But together with its pick-up-and-playability, it's also a very deep game, and the best place for seasoned veterans to get the kicks is online, against the best of the best. I really like the way you can 'juggle' or 'bounce' opponents when knocked down momentarily, where you can keep inflicting hits on their battered bodies to rack up massive combo moves.

Though I say that the fighting engine hasn't changed dramatically, that's not to say it's not an improvement over its originators. Running on the Xbox360, the game is a much more visually appealing proposition than DoA Ultimate. Running on an LCD TV with in HD mode, the game is simply stunning. Not only are the characters amazingly smooth to look at, not to mention the way they move (the motion capture is realism personified!), but the backdrops are really detailed, which adds to the immersion factor.

Many of the stages are also multi-tiered so that, for example, if you smash your foe down a flight of stairs, they'll bounce all the way to the bottom, where the fight recommences. Oftentimes the stages are just as impressive as the characters themselves, and there are even environment-based moves, where you might continues to rapidly stomp your foes' head as he or she cascades down a large rock face. As well as the multi-tiered levels, there are also interferences along the way. "Interferences, Will?" you might think. There's one level set in an African savanna where a cheetah sometimes whips past, dealing damage, and in a more extreme case, there's a Las Vegas level set on the street, and cars drive past and will run over whoever's in the way. It's pretty full-on, I must say, and pretty much every level has some sort of interaction, whether it be electrified fences, breakable boxes or rampaging raptors.

Moving at a very brisk pace, DoA4 places importance on big, painful moves, which can often send your rival flying horizontally across the screen or at least daze them momentarily, which allows you to move in a unleash quick combinations of yet more painful moves. Of course, blocks play an integral part in the flow of fights, and it can be frustrating to unleash a long combo and be met with blocks. Reversals are pretty cool too, and are an important part of any serious players repertoire, and as the name suggests, where one character goes to kick you in the head, you quickly grab their leg and punch them in the family jewels before they finish their head-kick move.

Dead or Alive 4 showcases the Xbox360's
impressive polygon crunching power: not
a jagged edge in sight - nothing but curves

As well as the game's instant accessibility, there's also an incredible amount of depth to the game. After a few weeks honing my skills, I felt rather cocky and bested pretty much everyone who challenged me to a round of digital biffo in the office. And just for the record, my player of choice was La Mariposa, the American break-dancing fighter, who can string together a very mean combination of gravity-defying moves. Anyway, thinking I was unstoppable after a few days of victories, the game got a bit boring. Until I booted up Xbox Live.

Once online, my cocky swagger was reduced to a belated slouch as I was summarily smashed left, right and centre. But as the difficulty increased, my skills responded to the upsurge in quality combatants and during the thousands of random matches I played, I did win quite a few after the first dozen or so when I got hammered, which was good for my self esteem.

Playing fighting games online is an awesome way to play, and gives you potentially millions of opponents to fight, which can lead to many late nights in front of the TV. The online game modes cater for between 2 and 16, and are generally one-on-one matches played out over a number of rounds between all applicants, and comprise of Winner-Stays, Tournament, Team Battle, Survival, Loser-Stays, and Kumite.

As well as a slightly tweaked fighting engine, the game introduces a number of new characters too, all of which come with an abundance of unlockable costumes (some of which are hilariously dumb). While the old favourites are there, such as the demure and incredibly top heavy females, such as Ayane, Hitomi, Kasumi and the more outgoing Tina and Busty - sorry - Christie, plus the boys, including Jann Lee, Zack and Ryu Hayabusa, there are a few new faces to boot. Brad Wong, the Drunken Master, is a delight to play as he staggers around with deadly intent, and the beautiful Kokoro, who's slow but seriously powerful blows will leave your enemies reeling. Oh, there's even a cameo appearance by Spartan-458, a female version of the Master Chief from the Halo universe. Looking a million bucks in this DoA game, she has some very cool moves (and very cool armour), one involving a plasma grenade!

With about 20 characters all up, there's plenty of choice, even if almost half are cosmetically enhanced femme fatales that tend to stun male gamers with their natural assets. There's plenty of different fighters to suit all tastes, from huge, slow and loping wrestlers to super-agile, rapid-fire kung fu experts and even the aforementioned drunken master.

There are no real flaws with the game, save for the way Team Ninja approached it's female characters. I get the impression the only reason the female fighters are in this game are to be objectified. For some, great. For the upholders of sexual equality such as myself, this cannot be tolerated, much like the aforementioned dancing games.

I say this because whenever you finish the game in Story Mode with one of the female characters, their cut scenes are incredibly, and sometimes ludicrously lascivious: one involves a balding old man accidentally falling onto one of the nubile and extremely sexy and top heavy female characters on a train (always on the train), and his hands just happen to grab her melons as he flails around for something to grab - complete with cheesy 'honk' sound effect. Of course, she proceeds to snap kick him in the head and he goes flying out of the train. But the thing I couldn't understand was that the male cut scenes don't involve old women grabbing their buttocks or anything like that, and with more and more women playing videogames, I thought this to be a little odd.

But at the end of the day, if the only complaint I can find about this game is that the cut-scenes are blatantly sexist, then Tecmo has done something right:the game itself is tightly coded, fast-paced, involving and loads of fun. If you like your fighting games visually appealing, and with plenty of depth and awesome backdrops, Dead or Alive 4 will be just ticket. There are few fighting games that can touch this title in terms of eye candy, not to mention gameplay, and if you like combo moves, you'll get much more use out of it than those disdainful dancing games.

Game: Dead or Alive 4
System: Xbox360
Players: 1-16
Online: Yes
Developer: Tecmo (Team Ninja)
Distributor: Microsoft

Rating: 85%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

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