Dead or Alive a Casual Retrospective Part 4

With Dead or Alive 3, Tecmo had established the series as a staple of the Xbox library. It became a big hit in the Xbox’s early days, and Tecmo themselves would see bigger success later in the generation with the 3D Ninja Gaiden reboot.

Tecmo had pretty much become a second party studio for Xbox at this point. If this was modern Microsoft they’d have probably bought them outright. Which, considering what’s going on over there at the moment, means Tecmo was extremely lucky that did not happen.

It was only natural that when the next generation of Xbox was announced, the Xbox 360, Tecmo would begin working on a new entry of the series for this new HD generation. his would be Dead or Alive 4 which released as a launch title for the 360 on December 29th, 2005.

That’s a bit of an awkward release window isn’t it. It’s too late for the holiday season and everyone is skint after that so no one could afford a copy anyway. The game was already delayed for a month by that point, so you’d think they’d delay it another week or two just to let people recover from the post-Holiday crash.

I don’t think that was an option though. Tecmo wanted this thing out in that launch window, and we all know by now how inflexible they can be. According to an interview Itagaki did with Famitsu Xbox, he spent 99% of his time developing the game and only slept forty minutes in four days. Jesus Christ, and I thought modern crunch time was bad. Well, ok that is still worse but working like that still isn’t great.

Now Itagaki is known for exaggerating a bit in interviews. He even called the 360 the most powerful gaming console in a press conference despite the PlayStation 3 already being out by then, so take what he said with a pinch of salt. I fully believe he and his team were crunched to hell though. Given this industry it’s not hard to believe in the slightest.

But the game did come out when Tecmo wanted. Mostly, launch window is close enough, and unlike the PS2 port of DOA2 it wasn’t a buggy mess. In fact, it got good reviews from most gaming outlets at the time. With much of the praise going to the game’s graphics and online mode.

Dead or Alive 3 was also well received by players. For many this is the highpoint of the series, and in a lot of ways it was. While it didn’t sell as well as 3 did, it still sold a million copies within its first year and was later re-released as part of the Xbox Platinum line.

It also made big splashes in the competitive circuit. It appeared in all the major fighting game tournaments like EVO and… World Cyber Games? Champion Gaming Series? The hell are those. This is what I love about doing retrospectives like this, learning about obscure defunct shit.

Well only CGS is defunct, WCG is still ongoing, but be honest with me this is the first you’ve heard about it. Does anyone even follow Esports? I think women’s football gets more views than it nowadays.

All joking aside, there are reasons I’m bringing these up. Dead or Alive 4 was the second fighting game shown at WCG, with the first being Dead or Alive Ultimate, so it only came second to itself really. And thanks to it being part of CGS, Dead or Alive 4 is the first fighting game to ever be broadcast on TV since that event was streamed by DirectTV at the time.

Not a bad legacy all things considered. Even outside of the competitive circuit though, Dead or Alive 4 still received a lot of praise and accolades. I remember the old Screwattack Top 10 Fighting Games video from way back in the day and it had Dead or Alive 4 as an entry, at number eight I believe. There was a jab at the overly sexualised female characters, but they still considered it a tightly designed and very enjoyable 3D fighter, and that does seem like it was the consensus at the time.

But I’ve also seen varying opinions on the game in more recent times. While there are fans that consider it the best game in the series, I’ve heard a few that say it was a step down from its predecessors, with some calling it one of the worst titles in the series. Not necessarily that it’s bad, just that it’s weaker compared to some of the other entries.

This does appear to be a minority opinion but considering how niche the series is it’s going to be hard to get a definitive consensus on the game. Regardless, whether you like this game or not, everyone agrees that this is the final “classic” Dead or Alive game. It was the final game directed by Itagaki before he left Tecmo, and the next game saw a shift in the style and gameplay.

Whether that’s a good thing or bad thing, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see, but Dead or Alive 4 did see a shift of its own. Remember how Screwattack made the jab at the series sexualised female cast? Yeah, Dead or Alive 4 was when that was starting to become what the series was known for the most.

I never played this game growing up, but I do remember seeing this game talked about online and a lot of the discourse around it was on the fan service. You couldn’t talk about this game without mentioning the women and I must be honest that did make me a bit interested in it.

I’m not ashamed to admit that. I was a teenager, and we all go through that phase in our lives, but I’m losing track of the point. What I’m trying to get across here is the Dead or Alive 4 is arguably where the fan service became a problem.

How bad was it? It, alongside Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate, was the first game in the series to get a Mature rating by the ESRB. That’s how bad it was. I’ll get deeper into this later in the review. Just know that for some fans this is the point in the series where it went from a fighting game with a strong fan-service element, to THE fan service fighter.

I am getting a bit ahead of myself though. So, let’s take a step back and talk about the game itself. The first thing I noticed right was just how similar Dead or Alive 4 was to the previous games. The gameplay is almost exactly the same. Similar control, mechanics and game feel. Not much has been changed.

The only change I noticed at the start was that the Hold System has now reverted back to how it was in 2 Ultimate with middle kicks and punches now having a separate input. I don’t know if they preferred it like that and reverted it back after finding DOA 3’s system too easy, or if this was a change implemented in Ultimate and kept over from that, but the change was made and that’s all I know.

It’s become abundantly clear that playing Ultimate for this retrospective was a mistake. I should have played Hardcore instead. I would have gotten a better idea on how the series evolved from that. Can’t do anything about it now though, just got to move on.

The Hold System being like this does make it feel a lot more technical. It’s not as easy to use as it was in 3 so it doesn’t feel as overpowered. It is overpowered but now it requires a bit more effort to use. I’m not sure if I like the change though. I personally liked how 3 handled it. In that game it was easier to get to grips with and made getting through the game a lot easier.

As far as new mechanics go there’s the Bounce Combo. When executing juggles certain attacks will bounce the enemy off the ground to allow for a follow up. Certain low and mid attacks can even hit off the ground. It doesn’t give you much, but it does feel like a natural extension to the combat so it’s a nice addition overall.

The only other major new thing I noticed was that some stages now have more interactable elements. Some now have obstacles you need to be aware of like cars on the Gamblers Paradise stage and Dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park themed stage. It has a name, but fuck it, everyone is just going to call it the Jurassic Park stage. There are also low walls in some stages that you can knock enemies over, and then do a running jump to get an extra attack in.

Both only further add to the stage interactivity. Which was already one of the series strongest elements. I really like the stages in this game. They might be my favourites in the series. I love how weird and creative they get, and they’re much larger with more things to interact with.

I will say the obstacles can occasionally screw you over, but this is a very rare occurrence. The stages are designed so the obstacles aren’t too difficult to avoid. Which makes when they do hit someone even more entertaining. That’s one aspect I love about the stages; there’s so much to them you won’t see the entirety of them in a single match. It makes you want to replay them to see what you can find.

Those are the big gameplay differences, but there are more. Character move sets were made bigger, some moves were given new properties like being able to be charged, the game now has helpful prompts for throw combos to let you know when to do the next input, and the game’s speed was made noticeably faster.

That’s what it felt like anyway. Dead or alive 4 is a much faster paced game than 3, which was already a decently fast game to begin with. The game itself also feels a bit smoother to play. By every metric this is a much better game.

I mean it plays better, looks better which I will get to later, the fighting is the most refined it’s ever been, the stages are the most creative and fun they’ve ever been. There’s been a lot of improvements that should make this the best in the series. So why don’t I like it as much?

I mean it has all the elements I liked from previous games. The Triangle System adds a fun strategic element to the combat, the game feel is great with good weight to the attacks, and the stages have a lot of interactable elements and still make it feel like playing through a martial arts movie.

It has everything I liked from the previous games with some elements even being better, and yet, I find myself enjoying the game less. Why is that? Well, it could be because of two reasons. One is that it isn’t all that different from previous games.

Dead or Alive 4 is better in mostly subtle ways. In ways that most players wouldn’t notice. I didn’t know Bounce Combo’s were a thing in this game. I only learned they were a thing after looking the game up because I didn’t even notice they were there.

That’s why I wanted to start with the gameplay instead of building up to it like I usually do, because there really isn’t a lot to talk about. Everything important to say about the combat I’ve already gone over in previous parts.

Dead or Alive 4 is the textbook definition of an iterative sequel. It doesn’t innovate on its predecessor’s it just improves and tweaks on them. If I could be fair though, Dead or Alive 3 was like that as well and arguably worse at it. At least 4 added Bounce Combo’s. Ok so you barely notice them, but at least they’re a new addition. 3 just added slopes and that was about it.

But while I was critical of 3 for not adding much, I find it easier to forgive it for that since it was only the third entry in the series. By the fourth entry you need to start getting a bit more ambitious. I suppose I can’t be too harsh on it though. There is the adage of, “if it’s not broken why fix it”. I can’t be mad at it for sticking to a formula when the formula is fun, and the moment-to-moment gameplay is still very fun.

But outside of the gameplay, the actual content Dead or Alive 4 offers isn’t all that new either. In terms of modes, you’ve got Story Mode, Time Attack, Survival, Team Battle, Versus, Watch Mode and Online. All of these are simply returning from the previous games with not much new added or changed.

Story Mode is pretty much the same thing as before. An arcade style ladder where you play through the individual characters story. Time Attack is a standard arcade ladder with a timer, Survival is a gauntlet where you try to last as long as you can, Versus is where you play against friends or a computer, wait this is just standard fighting game stuff isn’t it.

That’s all the game has. All these modes are so bog standard; they’re literally in every fighting game ever made. The sad part is there’s no real reason to play through any of them outside of Story or Time Attack since there the only ones that unlock anything.

The unlock grind sucks in this game too. To get all the costumes you need to play through every character Story Mode, and you only unlock one costume at a time, and some characters have up to seven outfits, no, no I’m good thank you.

I don’t get this. 3 had a great system for unlocking costumes. In that game it was all tied to doing specific challenges and you could get multiple at once. It was great. Dead or alive 4’s method is so much more tedious by comparison. I did not unlock all the outfits this time around. I just couldn’t bring myself to replay the game enough times to get everything.

But back to the modes, there just isn’t much on offer here that weren’t in the other games. Hell, Watch Mode barely counts as a mode since it’s just watching the computer fight. You can take screenshots of them now, but why the hell would I do that? What use would that be?

The only interesting mode is Online, and this is where I need to give Dead or Alive 4 credit. The online mode is interesting in how it’s set up. The game uses a traditional lobby system, but rather than have the lobbies merely be a menu, the lobbies here are full virtual spaces where you control a little avatar that runs around to interact with other players.

If that sound familiar, that’s because it’s the same kind lobby system used in Street Fighter 6 and every modern Ark System Works game. It’s not as in depth as those, but Dead or Alive 4 was the first to do online in this way and honestly, it’s awesome. Considering this style of online mode is slowly becoming standard for the genre, Dead or Alive 4 is a major pioneer in this regard.

It was very ahead of it’s time. Even just having online makes it that way. This was the early days of online gaming on consoles. Nowadays fighting games need a good online and Dead was one of the first to get on the ground floor of that.

It also has its own unique charm. You have different types of avatars to pick from with different accessories, you can have different receptionists, there’s different kinds of lobbies to pick from. For an online mode from 2005 they put a lot into this.

It still works too. You can jump in and play a few games, though good luck trying to get a game going since this is twenty years old now. But there are still dedicated players keeping the scene going, so if you want to play it online you still can. It’s kind of amazing that people are still playing this. It speaks to the fact that, despite not having much new, Dead or Alive 4 is still a good fighting game. Just because it doesn’t reinvent the wheel doesn’t mean it isn’t a solid ride.

But aside from the Online, which isn’t even technically new since Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate and 3 had online too, it’s just done differently in 4, what else does it have? Not much unfortunately. The other modes aren’t bad, they’re very standard and safe. There isn’t much of anything interesting in regard to the game modes.

It’s funny, in my Dead or Alive 3 review I said that came suffered from being sandwiched between the innovative second entry and the more content rich and refined fourth entry. Now, I said that because that was the assumption I had based on what I had heard about Dead or Alive 4. After playing it though, I can say the first part is accurate, but I wouldn’t call it “content rich”.

In terms of content, it offers the same that the previous games did. Even the number of stages is equal to what Dead or Alive 3 had. In fact in some cases it offers less. Tag Battle mode is still in the game, but it’s only available through the other modes. There’s no dedicated Tag Battle mode like you had in the previous games.

Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate also had way more costumes to pick from. Some characters in that game could have a maximum of twenty costumes, in 4 they max out at 7. Not bad, but it’s a huge drop compared to 2 Ultimate, which released the same exact year. Not exactly a great look.

That isn’t to say what is on offer here is bad. Far from it. These are all tried and tested modes that are still fun for a couple of rounds. You can also play a lot of them in Tag Battle mode which is still a great extra, but I’ve already talked about it in previous parts and 4 doesn’t add much to it worth noting.

That’s the real issue with the modes. They aren’t bad, we’ve just seen them all before, and there isn’t much to say on them. Even the menu design is the same. You guys couldn’t even change the menus? Look it was cool in 2002, but you guys need something fresh.

But so what if the content is samey. I liked the content in the previous games, so why wouldn’t I like them here just the same. Well for one seeing the same shit three times in a row does eventually start to make it dull. Even if the content isn’t bad, the lack of anything new is a major flaw to the overall package.

There is, however, one other factor I need to make clear. When I praised the content of the previous Dead or Alive games, I was judging them based on the standards of their time. I wasn’t looking at them through a modern lens, I was trying to look at them based on the time period of when they came out and comparing them to other fighters released at around the same time.

The games had great content, for their time. Obviously, a lot of modern fighters offer far more, but in the context of when the Dead or Alive games came out, they were great. I will admit that for 2 Ultimate I did go a bit easy on it since it was a remake of an older game that was also sold in a bundle; I was trying to judge it on it being a port/re-release and in that context, it was perfectly fine. It still gave you tons to do.

The problem with Dead or Alive 4 is, in the context of when it originally dropped, it didn’t offer nearly as much as other fighters on the market. The same year this game released, Tekken 5 and Soulcalibur 3 released on the PlayStation 2, and those games are stacked with content.

Not only did those games have the same exact modes that Dead or Alive 4 had, including story modes of their own, but they offered so much more. They had character customisation, Tekken 5 had classic arcade versions of the first 3 Tekken games and a 3D beat-em-up mode, and Soulcalibur 3 had tons of extra bonus modes and a strategy RPG style mode.

The actual modes themselves were also much better. While I praised Dead or Alive 2 and 3 for having story modes at a time when they weren’t commonplace, I find it now lacking in Dead or Alive 4. At least when compared to Tekken 5 and Soulcalibur 3.

It’s not fair comparing the Story Mode in DOA4 to Soulcalibur 3. That game had one of the most in depth story modes of it’s day with branching pathways and secret fights. It is however fair to compare it to Tekken 5’s story mode since they’re set up very similarly, eight fight arcade ladder with rival battles, and Tekken 5’s is better in most ways.

For one Tekken 5 has prologues that explain each character’s story. Giving you proper set up for what is going on. Dead or Alive 4 doesn’t do this, which can make it hard to tell what is going on. It’s not too hard to put the pieces together, but Dead or Alive 4 doesn’t do a lot to bring newcomers up to speed. Unless you’ve played the previous games, or have the manual, you’re going to be lost going into this.

Second, while both Tekken 5 and Dead or alive 5 have rival battles with their own prefight cutscenes, Tekken 5 has far more of them. Not only are there more unique rival battles, but even when a rival battle is shared, they change up the cutscenes to better reflect the character you’re playing as. Dead or Alive 4 does this too, but only in specific instances and most of the changes are fairly minor.

Tekken 5 even has post-fight cutscenes to show the result of the fights, while Dead or Alive 4 does not. It just feels like Tekken 5’s Story Mode had a lot more effort put into it, and that isn’t fair to say. Dead or Alive 4 clearly does have a lot of work put into it, but it feels like Team Ninja was resting on their laurels with it and not improving on what they had.

And keep in mind I’m just comparing it to what came out that year. The previous year saw Mortal Kombat Deception which had a full-on adventure game for its story mode, on top of having a chess minigame, and a Puzzle Fighter clone. Def Jam Fight for NY had a full cinematic story mode with RPG elements. Don’t even get me started on Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3.

Basically, while the content of the first three Dead or Alive games was perfectly serviceable for the time, by Dead or Alive 4 it needed to offer a lot more than it did. It’s obvious that most of the development time was spent on the Online mode. That was the big new feature they were touting, and it was a great feature to have at the time. Innovative even given how it was structured.

However, the time they put into that meant we didn’t get much in the way of new singleplayer content. Sadly, this would be prescient. I’ve felt that the advent of the online mode gave less incentive to developers to make big single player modes in their games. Not entirely mind you, a lot of fighters still tried to have singleplayer content, but not as much as they did. Poor Soulcalibur suffered the worst from it. Soulcalibur 4 was a fucking rip off man.

Things are getting better now, but Dead or Alive 4 is arguably the start of this trend. I can’t call what it offers bad, it’s just not that interesting and the modes lack longevity.  It really needed something new to keep things fresh like, oh I don’t know, a volleyball minigame. That would fit this series well.

But the content isn’t the reason I don’t like this game as much. It doesn’t help, but it’s more of a disappointment than something that pisses me off. No, the big reason that I don’t like this game as much is for one very simple reason, it is one of the most frustrating fighters I have ever played.

I don’t know what the hell happened, but the AI in this game is horrendous. As in one of the worst I’ve ever experienced in a fighting game. It is relentless. Even the early opponents never let up with their ceaseless barrage of attacks, it’s borderline unfair at times. The AI is so ruthless, so brutal in how it completely wrecks your shit, that it sucks all the fun out of the game for me.

The only AI that I can think of that’s worse is from fighting games in the 90’s, and at least that had a reason to be as hard as it was. They were arcade games that wanted your money. I can at least forgive them for being hard, especially since they were older games made when they were still figuring the genre out.

Dead or Alive 4 has neither excuse. And really, saying it’s better than 90’s fighting games is damning it with faint praise since those were designed to be a cheating bastard. Dead or Alive 4 is hard, but I wouldn’t say it cheats nearly as hard. Outside of the typical input reading, because fighting game AI will always do that, it’s mostly difficult due to how aggressive the computer is.

It never lets up with the attacks. It will pummel you with combo after combo and if you aren’t good at using the Hold system, you just have to eat it and go “thank you sir may I have another”.  Of all the Dead or Alive games, this is the one where you need to learn the Hold system the most, and guess what, it’s also the game with the hardest Hold system to learn.

Well ok, second next to the first one, but that’s still bad. Not only do Holds for middle punches and kicks have a different input, but the timing is now much stricter. So even if you guess right, you could still miss thanks to the tighter timing window.

That’s on top of the AI being very unpredictable. It’s hard using a counter system that requires reading the opponent, when you can’t read the opponent. So even if you do get good at the Hold System it won’t mean shit because it will still be a fucking wild guess on which Hold to use.

This overly aggressive AI also makes using throws incredibly difficult. Keep in mind that Dead or Alive is built around the Triangle System where throws beat holds, holds beat strikes and strikes beat throws. Because the AI is so aggressive in it’s strikes, that means you almost never have an opening to get a throw in. The only safe time I found to get one was at the very start of the match as a cheap shot and even that didn’t work half the time.

Good luck if you play one of the grapplers in this game. Getting normal throws is hard enough, but trying to get command throws is like trying to thread a needle blindfolded, upside down, and while the needle is on fire. You can’t even get an off the ground throw in because they never stay grounded long enough to do that.

I think the game knows this too. For some reason the exercises in training mode skips over all the OTG throws. At first I thought they were removed, but no, they are in the move list it just doesn’t cover them. So not only is the game hard because of the AI, but the mode designed to teach you each character doesn’t go over everything. It’s like it’s going out of its way to be as annoying as possible.

You may be thinking to yourself, “well Jackson if it’s so hard just switch to Easy until you’ve learned the game,” YOU CAN’T! There is no Easy option in the difficulty select. The lowest option is Normal and there’s no other way to adjust the difficulty. How do you not have an easy mode? Even Ninja Gaiden had an easy mode, and that game was hard as nails.

Even then, whether it has an easy mode or not is missing the point, why is the game this frigging hard? The other games weren’t this hard. Except the first but that’s because it was old and crappy. 3 was a bit on the easy side I’ll grant you, but 2 was decently challenging on normal and I could handle that. This though? This is something else entirely.

At first, I thought this could have been a by-product of the crunched development. I thought that they may not have had enough time to fine tune the AI and that was the cause of the increased difficulty. That is a possibility, we’ve seen fighting games that are hard largely due to flaws in the programming. The reason why Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo is so hard in the west was due to a bug.

I don’t think that is the case here. While it may be hard due to a rushed development, I think it’s a lot more likely this was intentional. They wanted this AI to bully you. Why do I think this? Well let me provide some context.

See, not long after Dead or Alive 3 came out, Itagaki would direct the 3D Ninja Gaiden reboot, and if you know anything about Ninja Gaiden it’s how difficult those games are. They push you to your limits and test your skills in ways few games can.

I think Itagaki wanted Dead or Alive to be something similar. He was pushing in this more aggressive direction at the time. Not long after this game we got Ninja Gaiden 2 which was also a game that was uncompromisingly relentless. He clearly wanted to push players abilities to their limits. I have no proof of this. Itagaki has never come out and said this was his goal as far as I know, but assuming it was, this was a massive miscalculation on his part.

Video games, even notoriously hard ones, should always ease the player into the difficulty. They start out simple and easy to get the player used to the mechanics, and then they start testing their skills with those mechanics. Dead or Alive 4 instead throws you into the deep end with no floaters and goes “sink or swim motherfucker”.

It’s a terrible way of getting the player into the game. There’s no way to ease yourself into it so you can learn how the game plays. You just kind of have to figure it out as you go. Even arcade games in the 90’s made the first opponents easy so you could learn the controls. This game throws you into the thick of it and forces you to learn as you go.

I really hate games like this, and before anyone retorts with the phrase “git gud”, please save the breath, your brain is in dire need of the oxygen. I get the whole get good mentality. Of course you should have some skill at a game to get the most out of them, I don’t dispute that. That’s just common sense.

However, I also believe that should not be a requirement to simply enjoy the game at a basic level. That’s not fun, that just becomes homework. I shouldn’t have to get good at a game to enjoy it, I get good at a game because I enjoy it. If I like a game and play it enough then of course I’m going to try to get better at it. You think the dudes that go for SSS rank only runs on Devil May Cry did it because it’s the only way to enjoy it. No, they do it because Devil May Cry is fucking awesome.

Dead or Alive 4 doesn’t understand this. It seems to think that if it forces you to learn it, you’ll somehow enjoy it more, and maybe you would in a weird Stockholm Syndrome kind of way. I want to like you Dead or Alive 4, but you make me work for that, and I’m sorry but you’re not worth the time. Not when I have other fighting games I could be playing that aren’t nearly as demanding.

I would be lying though if I said I couldn’t see others liking this approach. I know a lot of gamers out there are challenge junkies that love this kind of balls to the wall difficulty. They love to learn the ins and outs of a game and putting their skills to the test. I can see those guys really vibing with Dead or Alive 4. But I would also argue that if there was one genre where this kind of difficulty doesn’t work it’s fighting games.

I’ve talked a lot about fighting game difficulty before. Often being critical about them being bullshit and unfair. Is that just me being salty? Perhaps, but I have played a lot of fighters where the difficulty is way too much.

But I’ve never really gone into detail on why. Why is fighting game AI so difficult? I mean I know why, it cheats. It reads your inputs and uses cheap tactics. That’s obvious, but why does it do that. Simple, because it was the only way for it to be challenging.

Fighting games are not an easy genre to learn. Aside from things like mechanics and controls, there’s a lot of subtle things you need to be aware of like frame data and such, but one thing that fighting games always give you are options. From normals, to special moves, to supers, to even different ways to move around, fighting games give you a lot of tools for which to play around with.

On their own they aren’t too hard to learn. Trying to tie everything together and learning to use everything consistently isn’t, but that’s typical of most video games. I still don’t know how to use Gun Slinger in Devil May Cry, in fact I always just stick to Sword Master.

But fighting games have more than just mechanical options. They also have multiple characters that all play differently, even having their own unique mechanics, and those characters have wildly different ways of handling other characters in the roster. If you’ve heard the term “learn the matchup” and wondered what that meant, this is what it’s referring to.

Part of learning a fighting game is learning how your main works against everyone else. How to push their advantages in their good matchups, and how to work around their disadvantages in their bad. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. And keep in mind that fighting game rosters can have dozens of characters to pick from.

All of this isn’t something you need on a casual level. It’s only in competitive where it becomes super important. However, since characters do play differently, they are going to have natural advantages and disadvantages against others. A grappler is always going to struggle against a zoner for example.

But in competitive it gets even more complicated. Since you not only have to deal with character matchups, but how every individual player plays each character. Because a lot of fighting games have a lot of player expression that let you play characters in different ways.

My point in all this is to say that there is a lot to consider in fighting games. A lot of different options and situations that intermingle to create a host of differing answers to both. The reason why fighting games are hard for a lot of people is simply so much to think about at any given moment and not every player is going to have the same answers to them.

Now that you know that, let me ask you a question. If a human being can struggle to deal with all of this, how the hell can a computer handle it? The answer is it can’t. That’s why it’s designed to be reactive, which isn’t how most AI in videogames is designed.

Videogame AI is designed to be very pattern based. Enemies will move and attack in specific ways and most of the challenge in videogames comes from learning those patterns and how best to react to them.

In a platformer if an enemy runs towards you, jump over them. If they hop around, go under them or wait until they’re low enough to jump on them. You get the idea. Even the most difficult games basically revolve around pattern recognition.

My point is that most AI in games is aggressive because the challenge comes from h. The enemies in most games are designed to go after you. AI in most games is very proactive because the challenge comes from how a player reacts to what is presented to them.

Fighting games are the opposite. You can’t design enemy AI in a fighting game for the player to react too. Not only would that make them too easy, but it would also be too easy for the patterns to get screwed up by the tons of options available. That’s why fighting game AI is designed to be reactive.

It’s designed to react to whatever you do, hence why it reads your inputs. It’s the only way to make fighting game AI remotely challenging since if it was designed to be reacted to it would crap itself or be so easy as to be mindless. This is why a lot of fighting game AI is so frustrating, because it’s designed to react to you not the other way around like every other game.

But Dead or Alive 4 seems to do the exact opposite. The AI is so aggressive that it forces you to react to it. In a genre where that’s hard to do even against human opponent, and also while it reads your inputs and is too unpredictable to get a read on it. Do you see the problem yet?

Itagaki clearly wanted to push players into learning the game by making it difficult like he did with Ninja Gaiden, but you don’t learn a fighting game by playing against an AI. Beating fighting game AI is about finding exploits in the code or just getting lucky. It’s very different from playing against a real person. Talk to any fighting game player and they’ll tell you the only way to truly learn a fighting game is if you play against other people.

The single player stuff is mostly there for fun. It’s for the casual audience who may not have the time to learn a fighting game. They just want to mash buttons and unlock some stuff for local matches. This was what made Dead or Alive a hit back in the day. It was a very casual friendly fighter that was easy to pick up and play.

So, Itagaki is trying to push players to learn fighting games through modes designed for players who don’t want to learn fighting games. This isn’t just missing the point, it’s firing in the complete opposite direction of the point. Casual players won’t enjoy this, they’ll probably just get annoyed and stop playing it after a few rounds.

I can’t imagine the competitive players liked this approach either. They just play these modes to unlock stuff for the online, and now they need to struggle to do that because you’re trying to force people to learn the game by fighting against an AI that doesn’t help teach you how to play the game. In other words, no one is served by this decision.

This is why I didn’t unlock everything this time around. Beyond the process being time consuming, it’s just not fun fighting against the computer. Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate was also time consuming, and the computer there wasn’t a cakewalk, but I still enjoyed it enough to want to unlock everything. I didn’t enjoy this at all, and I’m not going to push myself to get costumes I’m not even going to use anyway.

Now I did finish the Story Mode at the very least. Which meant I got to see most of what the game had to offer. It’s not like the AI is impossible. It is still beatable with enough patience, but even when I won in Dead or Alive 4 it never felt like it was because of my skill. It always felt like it was all due to luck.

The single player is actively unfun. Outside of Dead or Alive 1 this is the game that I struggled with the most. Which is a shame because the gameplay is great, but playing against the computer is like trying to push a boulder up a hill so I have a hard time enjoying it. It’s a prime example of element utterly ruining the rest of the game.

That’s on top of the gameplay not being much of an evolution of the previous games. There are improvements but there in much smaller and subtler ways, and the modes are the exact same thing as the last few titles with nothing new of interest added aside from the Online. This isn’t the big leap forward the series needed on the HD consoles.

So, if all that is the case, why is this considered the best game in the series? Nostalgia, it’s probably nostalgia. I mean it was a launch title for the 360, a console that was very successful and a lot of people owned. A lot of kids who got a 360 at launch probably owned this growing up. Especially if you were a teenager for obvious reasons, but we’ll get into that in a bit.

But there are things worth praising about Dead or Alive 4. The gameplay is still great and did refine the gameplay further. The improvements aren’t major; but they are improvements all the same. It’s hard to enjoy due to the AI, but the moment to moment fighting still feels good. I can imagine playing this with friends is a fun experience. Something I wouldn’t know since I have none, at least none that would play this with me.

Plus, the presentation is fantastic. It’s a Dead or Alive game so it better be. it’s the one area everyone can agree with when it comes to this series. Even if you feel the gameplay is shallow and the series propensity for bouncing booba puts you off, at least the games are nice to look at.

Dead or Alive 4, being the first in the series on the HD consoles, certainly wanted to let you know it was. There’s a lot more detail in both the character models and stages that take advantage of the more advanced hardware. From petal leaves blowing in the Kyoto in Bloom stage, to actual people being in Gambler’s Paradise, the stages in DOA 4 have much more colour and life to them than the ones in the previous games.

That said, there are some issues. There’s some mild pixelation in the visuals, and the collision for things like hair and clothing can sometimes look a bit buggy. I still think the game holds up well visually. Most of the issues are due to me picking nits. On the whole it’s a treat, even if it isn’t as polished as later HD fighters would get.

There wasn’t much of a major leap here in terms of the technical stuff. The animation is about the same, which is fine given the high quality the series already has with its animations. There’s just not a lot to comment on in terms of the nitty gritty stuff.

To be honest, while the jump to HD did provide a big graphical leap, I don’t think it was as big a leap as the other games had. Like, going from Dead of Alive 1 to 2 was massive. They looked generations apart. 4 just looks like an updated version of 3, or rather 2 Ultimate since that was itself an update of 3. My favourite part of this retrospective is how straight forward it’s been.

I’m not complaining about this. 2 Ultimate was already a great looking game for it’s time, and a more refined version of that is a perfectly fine visual upgrade. I think I’m just used to fighting game sequels being major leaps in graphical fidelity. Like if you look at Street Fighter 2 to Alpha and then 3 and you can see the visual enhancements play out in front of you.

Part of it was those games were built on increasingly powerful hardware, but it could also be the change in art style between them. Maybe that’s what Dead or Alive 4 needed. The series has been using the same realistic style mixed with anime for a while and it may need a shake up on that front.

Spoiler alert, that’s what happened with 5, and it did wind up looking better. I don’t think 4 looks bad at all. Far from it, I think it’s aged incredibly well visually. I just think it needed a fresher coat of paint so to speak.

The music I don’t have much to critique at all though. This shit is great. I really like a lot of the tracks in this game. They have a lot of energy and add to the intensity of the fight. And, of course, we have out licensed music in the form of Aerosimith’s Eat the Rich in the intro.

As you can see the intro is just an in-game intro showing some of the action. There’s no CG intro like in the previous games, which is a shame because I really liked those. It’s not a bad intro by any means, but I prefer a fancy cinematic for my fighting game intros.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t any CG though. The endings are still done in CG and it’s honestly some of the best CG in a fighting game at the time. Rivalling what Tekken was doing in a lot of ways. But while the CG is great, the content of the endings is another story.

Dead or Alive 4 feels like it went in a much more light-hearted direction than the previous games. That’s not to say the other games were super serious. They could, and did get quite goofy, but Dead or Alive 4 pushes much harder in that direction.

The Story Mode itself is already not as good as previous games. I already went over how it’s hard to follow what exactly is going on, but another problem is that a lot of the reasons why these characters fight is downright goofy.

Don’t get me wrong, some of these scenes are awesome. Jang-Lee dragon kicking a fucking T-Rex is one of the most baller things I’ve ever seen, but for every cool scene, there’s at least two dumb ones that give the lamest excuses for why these characters are fighting.

The tone is all over the place. It goes from overly serious one moment to cartoonish the next. I know a lot of fighting games have this problem. Tekken is especially bad at this, but even at their worst, fighting games usually have a balance in their tones. Even if they go serious or comedic depending on the character it never leans too hard in either direction unless it sticks to that tone.

Dead or Alive doesn’t have that balance I feel. The contrast between the serious moments and the comedic ones are so jarring, you’re liable to get whiplash from it. The endings only add to this. because some endings are great, while others make me question my life choices.

A lot of them feel random as all hell too. While the endings in Dead or Alive 3 felt like conclusions to the characters storyline, a lot of Dead or Alive 4’s feel out of place a lot of the time with no proper set-up. I’ll cover the endings when we get to the characters but suffice to say many of the endings didn’t feel like a fitting, well, ending to the story.

But there’s one other problem with these endings I need to go over, and that’s how much fan service there is in them. Now, we’ve already talked extensively about fan service in this series before, but we’ve primarily only discussed it within the costumes. Simply because that’s largely where the fan service in this series lay.

But Dead or Alive 4 is where it started creeping into more parts of the game, and the endings are the prime example of that. You could argue Dead or Alive 3 started it with Helena and Christie’s endings, but that was only two endings out of eighteen, and even those weren’t that bad. Honestly they were kind of tame.

The fan service in these endings is much more blatant. This series has always been blatant with how sexualised the women are. It invented jiggle physics for the breasts for gods’ sake. However, the fan service was always very easy to ignore.

Yes, there were a lot of overly sexualised outfits, but there were plenty that weren’t. If you didn’t like the sexier outfits you didn’t have to use them. That’s why I always called the fan service harmless, because it was very easy to not engage with it. Even jiggle physics can be toned down in the options.

Dead or Alive 4 is where it became a lot harder to ignore though. It’s in a lot more of the game, including the endings. Even the costumes across as a lot more overt than in previous games.

I’ve said before that Dead or Alive’s philosophy when it comes to the outfits was to make the characters look stylish and cool, rather than just being sexy. That still holds true for DOA 4, but there is a noticeable uptick when it comes to more risqué costumes and a lot of them don’t make much sense.

Let’s look at Tina for example. She’s always had more revealing attire than a lot of the cast, but it always made sense for her character. In DOA 3 she had an outfit that was basically just a swimsuit with a cowboy hat and boots, but she’s a wrestler who also works as a model; I can buy she would wear that over wearing sexy cat girl outfits.

Which she does in DOA 4. There’s two of them, one looks like cosplay of Catwoman from the 60’s Batman show, and the other looks like it’s for sexy time. Those are a lot more questionable. The funny thing is, I remember her having them in Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate, but I wasn’t that bothered by them there. I think it’s because that game had so many outfits that they felt more like an exception.

Put it this way, say you go into a hostess club in Japan and there are twenty girls there, 18 of them are wearing beautiful high-end dresses, and two are wearing Daisy Duke outfits.  Even if those two raise an eyebrow, you’re too distracted by the other girls to care. But if you cut the number down to seven, then it becomes a lot harder to ignore.

That’s how it feels here. Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate’s costumes were arguably worse in some cases, but there was so many of them it was easier to forgive since if you did find them objectionable you had a lot of other options.

Tina isn’t the only offender though. Christie has it worse. With her she’s wearing borderline fetish gear in her alternates. Even her main one is out there. It’s basically tight leather pants and an open top with no shirt or bra underneath. How she fights in that without a nip slip is a question only God can answer. She must packing some serious double-sided tape to keep her puppies in check.

The severity of this varies by character. Tina and Christie are the only characters that have it this bad. Helena and newcomer, La Mariposa are also on the sexier side with their outfits, but for Helena there’s only one that’s like that and for La Mariposa her costumes are on theme, so I can’t be that mad.

To be honest the outfits aren’t that bad, but they are pushing the line. Trust me, it’s nowhere near as bad as the next game. You have no idea what we’re in for with that one. It’s going to get quite spicy.

It’s in conjunction with the endings that it does become a problem for me. I think a good way of conveying my problem with them is through example. I’m going to cover the ending of just one character, and we’re going to compare it to an ending from 3. Just to give you an idea of how much more fan service is in them.

The character I’ll be using is Christie since she’s probably the best one for this. Here is her ending from 3. Or rather her story from DOA 3. I couldn’t find the ending on its own and this was the closest I could get. Just skip to 5:36 in the video to get to the ending.

As you can see it has a bit of fan service in it. It’s got a shower scene and Christie walking around in a bikini, it’s certainly got a lot of sex appeal. However, it’s also very dark, very mysterious, and I don’t know why the panther is there but it’s cool.

Yes, it has sex appeal, but all of it is in service to the character. Christie is supposed to be an assassin, someone who has an air of mystery and danger around them. Now I present her ending in 4.

Bit of a stark difference isn’t it. Now, to be fair, the ending does at least showcase Christie doing her job as an assassin. She is supposed to be a seductive femme fatale like character, and like her ending in 3 it does fit the character.

But why did it have to be like this? Why a strip club? Why wear the weird leather fetish outfit? I get the whole seduction angle, but there are far better ways of showing that. This just feels pandering in the worst ways possible. I mean it’s basically just a strip tease for god’s sake. I’m not a prude, but I want to be treated with some respect.

It comes out of nowhere too and doesn’t tie into Christie’s story at all. It’s just a random hit she’s doing on some guy we don’t know. It just comes across as pointless T&A for the sake of it. At least in 3 it made sense for her to dress the way she did. She was relaxing after a job. Here she’s doing this to kill a guy, but why did she need to do it this way?

I mean it doesn’t make sense. She’s in a public place and doing the hit in a way that draws attention to her. Isn’t the whole point of an assassin to blend into the shadows and not make themselves known. Christie is literally doing the opposite of this. And man, it’s a good thing the guy wasn’t gay or this plan really wouldn’t have worked,

You can see the differences. While both endings fit the character, one felt a lot more adult and made sense, while the other felt like it was made by an edgy teenager and was completely ridiculous. That’s the feeling I get while watching these endings. The endings in 3 felt a lot more mature in their content, while 4’s endings feel like they’re aiming more at the series target horny teenage boy demographic.

And believe me, this was a demographic they were targeting to the most at this point. I mean just look at how the series was advertising itself.

Ok, to be fair that is a pretty funny ad, but you can see where I’m coming from. It’s using a beauty pageant as a setting and let’s be honest those are the most shallow, male gaze centric events on the planet. We know why they picked this setting. Even the gameplay predominately features the female characters. It is clearly banking on the old “sex sells mantra”.

Look, this series has always had sex appeal. From the very first game it was always part of the series identity. But around this time, that sex appeal was becoming less a part of the series identity, and more it’s main identity, and there is a smoking gun I can point to on when that happened.

See, after Dead or Alive 3, Itagaki would make a spin off. Which is already a bad sign since fighting game spin offs are almost always terrible. I can count the amount of good fighting game spin offs on one hand and still have fingers left over.

Anyway, that spin off would be Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. A game that was one-part minigame compilation, one part dating sim, and one part perv simulator. It’s a game where you can essentially put the girls in revealing swimwear and watch them around the pool. Yeah, there’s volleyball and other games, but you play those to earn money to buy more revealing outfits. The whole game is built around ogling the girls.

Look, I don’t care that this exists. I don’t really get the appeal, but I get why others would. Japan has a deluge of games like this, and they sell. It’s a type of game that clearly its audience; a very weird and creepy audience.

All joking aside, this spin off did a lot of damage to how Dead or Alive was perceived as a series. Dead or Alive was a series that was already known for its fan service, and now it had a spin off that was nothing but the fan service. A spin off sold in stores with box art like this.

So now the series fan service was front, centre and fully on display in every game store around the world. People saw it and assumed that was all the series was. I remember my dad seeing it in a Blockbuster and scoffing at the thing. I couldn’t even really defend it because, well how can you. It’s hard to talk about without coming across as a pervert.

DOA already had a reputation as a, ahem, “coomer” game. An unfair and perhaps exaggerated reputation, but one that it did have. The Xtreme series only made it worse. Because of course they made another one of these. A year after 4 they made DOA Xtreme 2, which was somehow even more explicit than the first game. Don’t believe me, look at this.

https://youtu.be/srcGunrEb38?si=V8KM6gBso2jTVemM

By the way, if the video doesn't work, it's because it's age restricted on YouTube. That's why I had to post the link instead of embedding the video. Which should tell you everything you need to know about it.

I’m rambling now, I realise that, but hopefully you can see my point. The Xtreme games did not help the series public image. Quite the opposite. Before Xtreme the fan service was the awkward side tangent you had when discussing the series, but after Xtreme it became the main focus of every conversation around it.

Before if you said your favourite fighter was Dead or Alive, yeah, you’d get a raised eyebrow here and there, but you wouldn’t get that much scrutiny. If you said it post Xtreme, then you’d get a reaction like “oh, you like Dead or Alive? No, no I’m sure it’s for the gameplay. You know I’m going to go over here now, please don’t talk to me in public again.”

Xtreme was the main offender of this, but 4 did not help. Dead or Alive 4 became the impetus for the Extremification of DOA. Where the sex appeal became way more overt and all encompassing. A problem that would only get worse from here.

But now we come to the roster and the story. Dead or Alive 4 has a cast of twenty-two playable characters, the largest roster in the series thus far. All of the characters from Dead or Alive 3 return, except Omega, and the game introduces four newcomers. Though technically only two are fully brand new characters, you’ll see why later.

Most of the returning characters I don’t have much to comment on. The only returning character to receive any noticeable changes is Hayabusa, who now has a move-set based on the Ninja Gaiden reboot. He lost his handstand but gained an air combo and chargeable power attack.

His general move set is the same, but these differences do change things up a bit. It makes sense too. Back when this series started Ninja Gaiden was an NES trilogy with not much to pull from. Now they had an entire 3D brawler from which they could take better inspiration.

The rest of the returning characters didn’t receive the same treatment. Aside from new moves and some reworked animations, their general playstyle is the same. Because of this I won’t cover the gameplay of the veterans. I’ll cover it for the newcomers, but for returning characters I’ll stick to their story.

Also, I won’t be showing all the endings like I did last time. I’ll still cover them, but I’ll only showcase some of the more, let’s just say interesting endings in the game. They’re all on YouTube if you’re interested.

Speaking of which, the story of this game is that the Mugen Tenshin ninja clan, having had enough of DOATEC’s bullshit, finally decide to strike back against the company. So, it’s a massive war between the Ninja’s and DOATEC, with the latter now set to unveil their latest creations, Alpha-152.

Remember that Kasumi clone from all the way back in Dead or Alive 2? No? I don’t blame you; I forgot that was a thing too, but DOATEC did not. They’ve been working on an update of the clone that is way more powerful, and they plan a new tournament to showcase its capabilities to the world.

So, you have a major fighting tournament, an unstoppable bioweapon being unleashed by a shady organisation and a ninja clan going to war against said organisation. Suffice to say, hijinks ensue.

Now, you would think based on that plot synopsis that one of the Ninja’s would be the main character. Perhaps Hayate because he is leading the charge, or maybe Kasumi since her clone is the final boss of the game. You would think that, but you would be wrong.

The actual main character is Helena. She’s the canonical winner of the tournament and her ending even serves as the game’s grand finale. But since she’s an unlockable character you can only play as her after beating everyone else’s story mode I’ll save her for last. It just makes more sense to do it that way.

So why don’t we start with the ninja’s and, well I already went over their story. It really is just them going to war against DOATEC. There’s some individual story stuff for them like Hayate dealing with what DOATEC did to him, Kasumi being reluctant to fight and just wanting to return home, Ayane and Kasumi’s rivalry, and Hayabusa… being really cool? I guess.

For the most part they all share the same story. Individually there isn’t much to comment on. Even their endings are very similar. Hayate, Hayabusa and Ayane all have endings of them storming the DOATEC compound and comprise of what I can only describe as cool ninja shit. That’s basically what they all amount too, just the ninja’s being badass. Not that I’m complaining, they’re some of the best endings in the game.

The one exception is Kasumi. In her ending, she dreams that she’s a mermaid. No, I’m not kidding. She goes through all this serious shit involving her ninja clan, fights against her evil clone, and then suddenly mermaid dream.

Do you see what I mean about the endings coming out of nowhere. It’s one of the most jarring tonal shifts I’ve ever seen. I guess the ending works as a symbolic metaphor for her wanting to live free, but it’s just so random that I can’t take it seriously. And Kasumi is the frigging poster girl. Why give her the weird ending?

I’m beginning to think there was some serious Ayane bias behind the scenes. Think about it, she gets main character status in the last game, she’s the one mostly seen with Hayate in the cutscenes, she has the more serious ending that ties into the plot, and outside of DOA Ayane had a major role in the Ninja Gaiden reboot.

It really feels like Ayane should be the main character at this point. I know she’s the more popular character of the two, but Kasumi is still the face of the series. You need to at least make her feel important. This is like if Ken got all the attention over Ryu, it just doesn’t feel right.

The ninjas are the more important characters to the plot. Except Hayabusa. He’s just there, I don’t think they knew what to do with him. The rest of the cast vary in importance, and most of them haven’t changed much. So, I might as well get through the less important characters first.

First is Tina and Bass. Tina is once again entering the tournament to further her career path. Only now she’s gone from wanting to be an actress to wanting to be a rockstar. Ok, what the hell is going on with Tina? This is the third time she’s changed careers, and this one makes the least sense.

I get it, she has a love for the spotlight, and she wants fame and fortune across a wide variety of means. That’s what starstruck people do. She’s already had success in other entertainment media; she might as well try music too. Granted wrestlers going into music rarely ends well. Remember Randy Savage’s rap career? Google that if you don’t, I must spread the suffering.

But ok, she wants to try different career paths. That’s fine, but why does she need to enter a fighting tournament for this? I can buy that would help her be a model and actress because at least people can see her. They have a visual on whether she’d be good for modelling and, well she’s a wrestler so she can already sort of act, but music requires auditory talent. Meaning they need to hear her, preferably making music. If she wants a record deal, just cut a demo and hand it to a music guy.

Screw it, I’m on Bass’ side now. Oh, he’s an overly controlling father figure sure, but Tina is clearly going off the handle now. But Bass, bubbalah, instead of beating her into doing what you want, maybe you should try, oh I don’t know, talking to her! Like a normal dad would.

I mean she’s clearly going through something. Maybe she hasn’t gotten over the death of her mother or she’s feeling depressed and unfulfilled in life. Have a sit down and talk things through, help her through this troubled time in her life. Or maybe I’m overthinking this and it’s just a dumb fighting game plot. That’s a strong possibility.

Anyway, in Tina’s ending she becomes a rockstar and just rocks out. It’s a bit pointless but it’s a flashy and cool ending. Also, Tina can fucking shred too, and I mean that in two ways because she also skates in this ending. What can’t she do.

Bass’s ending meanwhile has him entering a big motorcycle race, but he gets distracted by an ad for Tina’s new movie and he falls off the track. It’s a funny enough ending, but it also has a distracting amount of fanservice in it. it’s got several pictures from DOA Xtreme in the background, and the flag girl is shown off as much as possible. Yeah, even the male endings have fanservice in them. That’s how omnipresent it is now.

Next is Hitomi and she’s entering for the prize money because her dad is sick, and her dojo needs financial aid. She also fights over a cabbage, because reasons. On a more serious note, she runs into Hayate again, in his Ein persona, and tries to get him to come back but he’s kind of in the middle of a war so that’s out of the picture.

In her ending, she just kind of lives her life. The ending is just her making breakfast, practicing karate and dancing naked in an open window. As you do. It’s another ending that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really conclude her story. She just fights Ein and, boom, she’s dancing topless. It’s so much less impactful than her ending in 3 which felt like a true coming of age ending. This is just silly.

Then there’s Zack. What the fuck happened here. Ok, Zack is after the money again, but this time he has something to use the money for. See he got rich last time and bought himself an island. Then the island sunk and he got abducted by aliens, and he now wants the money to pay the aliens to get the island back. I think my brain shit itself from having to type that.

And yes, all of that actually took place. It happened in the first Xtreme game which is considered canon to the main series. I guess aliens aren’t that much of a stretch. I mean they’ve already had Tengu’s running around and I believe in those a lot less than I do extra-terrestrials. It’s just this weird random element in the series lore that is never elaborated on.

Oh, but it gets weirder. In the actual Story Mode, Zack climbs up to the top of the DOATEC tower for absolutely no reason, I am not kidding he’s just doing this for fun, gets blasted off and falls about fifty feet on his head, and he gets up like nothing happened. Bullshit, this dude should be dead. I know these guys are superhuman, but even Batman couldn’t survive a fall that high. Zack should be a stain on the floor after that.

Even by fighting game logic that’s stupid. Speaking of stupidity, his ending is… just watch.

What can I even say about that? Look at it, I think it speaks for itself. Still, I have a few questions. Why did Zack transform into a chrome Teletubby? How did Zack transform into a chrome Teletubby? Since when could he do that? He’s a DJ turned kickboxer, not a frigging Kamen Rider.

Why did his girlfriend think seducing the skeleton would work? How did seducing the skeleton work? He doesn’t possess anything that would help him with a woman. Why would he even be attracted to her? He’s a eunuch, there’s nothing down there!

This is one of the goofiest fighting game endings I’ve ever seen, and I’m a fan of Tekken. The more I look at it the stupider it gets. I know Zack is a comic relief character, but this is pushing it. At least give the dude some dignity. Oh, and before you ask, he does get the island back, but it sinks again because a meteor strikes it. Poor guy can’t catch a break.

I think we need something a bit more down to earth after that. let’s talk about Jann Lee and Lei Fang next because there isn’t much to talk about. Jann is entering to test his skills; Lei Fang wants to beat Jann. Their stories are exactly the same as before. The only interesting part about them is Jann Lee dragon kicking a T-Rex. I know I brought that up already, but it’s so awesome I had to talk about it again.

Jann’s ending is one of my favourites in the game. It shows him in his dojo playing a trumpet and flashes back to his childhood, showing he had a rough time as a kid being bullied by gangs, but he was inspired by Bruce Lee movies to toughen himself up.

Not only is it cool to see the series prerequisite Bruce Lee inspired character actually be inspired by Bruce Lee in canon, but it’s a nice character driven ending that gives us a bit more insight into his motivation.

Lei Fangs ending on the other hand is dumb.

Ah yes, the classic Japanese comedy of accidentally groping a girl on the train. So wacky. Alright, I won’t be that guy who chastises Japan for its sexual comedy. I understand humour is subject to cultural norms and I shouldn’t judge them for it. Especially since Britain isn’t the best with that stuff either. Then again, I don’t like that kind of comedy in general. Make of that what you will.

But I will criticise them for turning a badass martial arts chick into a joke for cheap sex appeal. I think everyone can agree with that. Lei Fang was never one of my favourites or anything, but she was a cool character with a sense of dignity and grace to her. This ending just completely nuked that for a joke. A joke that wasn’t even that funny.

Lei Fang might have the worst ending in the game. Kasumi’s was random but at least it was creative, Christie’s was too much but at least it was in character, and Zack’s is more weird than bad. But Lei Fang’s isn’t just not funny, it also turns the character into a cheap sex object. Which, say what you want about the series, it never went that far before.

This is what I mean when I say the fan service was pushing it in this game. Maybe I went a bit too far in saying they turned Lei Fang into a sex object. I’ll admit that was hyperbole, it Xtreme that did that. But it’s still using her sexuality as part of a joke, and in order for it to do that it needs to objectify her in some way. There’s no good way of looking at this ending. Unless you find molesting girls hysterical, this is just trash.

Next is Brad Wong and his story is also the same as before. He’s looking for the legendary drink Genra for his master. I guess the whole idea last time of it being a metaphor of him overcoming his alcoholism was pure bullshit. He was just on a beer run. It’s a shame because Brad is a lot less interesting in this game as a result. He’s even more of a drunk bum than he was last time and now that’s all he really is.

A wise drunk bum mind you, he certainly has his cool moments, but it feels more like he’s becoming a straight up comic relief character. Dead or Alive 4 backpedalled on interesting character work with him and that makes me sad.

In his ending he does eventually find Genra, somehow, it’s never explained how he got it, and then this happens.

That must have been some good shit. Can I have some?

Next is Bayman who is once again after Donovan for revenge. Not much more to say on him really. His ending is weird though. He beats Christie as his final boss and somehow ends up handcuffed in a science lab being interrogated by a sexy female scientist. Because of course this game would have a sexy female scientist. Then he has a bunch of flashbacks, stabs his hand, then the lab blows up due to the ninja’s actions and he stays behind in the lab as it explodes.

Don’t ask me what it means, I’m just explaining what happens in it. I think they were hinting that Bayman was an experiment by DOATEC, and his memories were all implanted, at least that’s what I got out of it. This is never followed up on though, so I’m probably looking way too deep into this. Cool ending, but a little confusing.

Before I move on to the final veteran, let’s talk about the new characters. Starting with Kokoro. A young Geisha in training, Kokoro is far more interested in martial arts and is a practitioner of Baji Quan. She enters the tournament to meet other martial artists, although her mother is worried about what she’ll encounter at the tournament.

This isn’t just typical worry for the child’s safety, it’s more about Kokoro uncovering her origin. Turns out she’s the half sister of Helena. Her mother was another of Fame Douglas’ mistresses. Fame was a bit of a player as you can see.

It’s never directly said in Kokoro’s story this is the case, but it is very, very strongly implied this is the case, and later games would clarify it. Her ending has her go back to Japan to continue her Geisha training, and that’s about it. Would have liked a bit more information on her parentage, but it’s a decent enough ending.

Kokoro is fine. She’s a more feminine character, being more traditionally girly than a lot of the other women in the roster. While that helps her stand out, I also find her less interesting than the others. Even her storyline is more interesting in how she connects to Helena more so than her. Still, she’s likable enough, and her more conservative dress sense does give her a unique visual identity.

That last one does have a reason behind it. Kokoro is the least sexualised character in the roster, and that’s because she’s underaged. She’s only seventeen and I don’t think Team Ninja were seedy enough to sexualise an underage girl. At least I hope they aren’t. Please don’t do that Team Ninja.

Kokoro is another fighter that was designed to be beginner friendly. She has a lot of easy to learn strings that can mix high and low attacks very well, but she suffers from having mostly mid attacks which make her very easy to counter. You really need to get those mix ups in if you want to do well with her.

I do find she’s not as interesting as the other fighters. I find her move set a bit repetitive, and she doesn’t have any big cool moves that make me want to pick her. Not a bad character by any means, but she’s one of the more forgettable ones I find.

Next is the Luchadora, La Mariposa, which follows the trend of every fighting game at the time having to make a Lucha Libre wrestler. No really, every fighting game was doing this back then. Virtua Fighter had El Blaze, Street Fighter had El Fuerte, even Tekken dressed Julia Chang as a Luchador for Tekken Tag Tournament 2. I guess Mexican wrestling was big at the time.

La Mariposa at first seems like a typical fun loving Lucha wrestler, but there’s a bit more going on. Her real name is Lisa Hamilton, and she was a high-ranking scientist working for DOATEC. She was the one that experimented on Hayate all the way back in Dead or Alive 2 and is also responsible for Alpha-152. She’s had a change of heart after all the damage she’s caused though and has decided to betray DOATEC and stop their evil plans.

Now, how one goes from genetic scientist to masked wrestler is anyone’s guess, but that’s fighting games for you. None of this is actually covered in her story mode. Her ending doesn’t address this at all. It reveals her identity, but her ending shows her becoming a tag partner of Tina. Her past is never elaborated on, at least not in her story.

While Lisa is a new fighter, she technically isn’t a new character. She had first debuted in Dead or Alive Xtreme. She wouldn’t be the only character to debut in an Xtreme game, but we’ll get to the others later in the retrospective. I’m just glad they did something with her instead of leaving her in the perv game.

La Mariposa is pretty typical for a lucha type character. High flying moves? Check. Lots of kicks? Check? Elaborate grab moves? Check. She doesn’t break the mould for this archetype, but she is a solid take on it. She’s a lot of fun. A good grappler type character for those who want a bit more speed and combo potential from them.

 The last newcomer, at least for the base roster, is Eliot. Who serves as another classic fighting game archetype, the young guy replacing an older veteran. In Eliot’s case it’s Gen Fu since Eliot is Gen Fu’s pupil and enters the tournament as a test since he isn’t certain he’s worthy of carrying on his masters teachings.

It’s a typical coming of age story, but I like it. We see a lot of his self-doubt in his abilities, but as he fights, he does grow in confidence. I like Eliot, he’s an easy character to relate to. Also, since Gen Fu’s story was already concluded last time, it makes sense they would want to move on to a new character. So, this is one of the better examples of an older character getting replaced, even though Gen Fu is still in the game, he’s just not part of the story.

In his ending, Eliot defeats Gen Fu to prove his worthiness and returns to China to continue his training while remembering the struggles he had making it that far. It’s one of the better endings in the game. It doesn’t feel like it comes out of nowhere, it’s very serious and character focused, and it properly concludes his story. Why couldn’t all the endings be like this?

Despite being Gen Fu’s student, Eliot doesn’t fight exactly the same. He has a more defensive playstyle centred around keeping the opponent at a distance. He’s a more footsie focused character which can make him a harder character to learn. He also doesn’t hit as hard, but he still packs a decent punch, so I don’t find him as good as Gen, but he is still effective in the right hands.

He’s still very similar though. So it’s hard to call him a completely new character. He serves his role well though, and seeing this fighting style used by a younger character does help him stand out. Xinyi liuhe quan isn’t a common fighting style in fighting games, but when it is used it’s predominately used by old men. So, Eliot being a practitioner of it is unique in that regard.

The last base roster character with a story is Christie and there’s not much to say. She’s still working for DOATEC and acts as Donovan’s bodyguard. And no, Donovan doesn’t appear in game, which makes this the third game in a row not to have the main villain show up. Kind of a weird thing for the big bad to have no screen time. It’s almost like he doesn’t matter.

I already showed Christie’s ending, so I won’t talk about it here, instead I’ll note two things. One, this is the game that confirmed that Christie killed Helena’s mom, so that rivalry is now set in stone, and two she has a really creepy exchange with Eliot where it feels like she’s coming on to him. Which would be fine except for the fact he’s sixteen. Well, Christie is a creep now. Oh, wait she’s a hot woman, alright play the South Park clip.

Which brings us to Helena. The final Story Mode character and the most important. After the third tournament, Helena realised she can’t escape her responsibilities and has now taken over DOATEC. Though instead of trying to steer the company in a new more ethical direction, her plan is to just burn it all to the ground.

She’s the one behind the entire story. She manipulated the ninja’s into going to war, she hired Bayman to kill Donovan, and some of the games revelations were saved for her story mode. Like Lisa being a DOATEC scientist, which is a bit odd since you’d think they’d give it to her since it is her origin.

I get Helena’s story is supposed to be the final chapter. It’s the place where all the big revelations are which make sense, but character history should be told within that characters story. Saving it for another character, one they’re largely unrelated to for most of the plot, doesn’t make a lot of narrative sense.

Still, I think Helena has the best story in the game. it’s got a lot of dramatic stakes, it has a hint of tragedy in it, and it wraps everything up nicely. There’s a reason Helena is the final character you unlock for story mode. Her ending even acts as the ultimate crescendo.

Now that’s an ending. You got to love the Aerosmith track in the background, and it has some of the best cg in the entire game. For as flawed as the story mode is, this is a great conclusion to the whole thing.

There’s one part of the story I haven’t gone over yet though and that’s the final boss, Alpha-152. Not going to lie, I dreaded facing this bitch. With how tough the AI is I was certain she was going to kick my ass. And she did, but honestly, I don’t find her as bad as people make her out to be.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, she’s still a righteous pain in the backside, but honestly, she’s not that much harder than the regular fights. If you use running attacks, she’s really not that hard. I still died to her a lot, but I died a lot to the rest of the cast, so she doesn’t really stand out much.

Honestly, I find her more boring than anything. She’s just a blue Kasumi, with no personality to speak of. I guess they were going for a Dural from Virtua Fighter thing, except Dural sucked too. She was only interesting as a technical achievement. Why you would copy her is beyond me.

Congratulations Dead or Alive, you are now four for four in terrible final bosses. I mean, when the best one is a Tengu that literally has nothing to do with anything and is just kind of a weirdo, you know you’ve got problems.

That’s it for the story important characters, but there’s still a few more characters to mention. Outside of Helena there are five other unlockable characters. Ein, Gen Fu and Leon are unlocked by playing through Hitomi, Eliot and Zack’s stories respectively. They aren’t playable in Story Mode and move set wise they’re not that different to how they were before. Not much more to say on them.

You can also unlock Tengu of all characters by beating Time Attack with every other character. I did not do this. After finishing Story Mode I was just done. You have to beat it with the default settings which means two rounds and no, no I’m good thank you. I don’t like Tengu enough to go through all of that shit. Maybe if he was a hot chick I would, but what are the odds of that happening.

There is one final character to mention, and it’s a big one. If you beat Story Mode with every character, you unlock this…

That’s right, they added a frigging Spartan to this game. It’s not the Chief, it’s an original character named Spartan-458 Nicole, but it’s still a pretty cool guest character. They have a completely original move set too. It’s a bit more limited and repetitive compared to other characters, but they hit hard, and they have a command throw that has them lob a sticky grenade at the enemy so I can’t complain too much.

To go with this character there’s also a Halo themed stage, the Nassau Station from Halo 2. This stage is great. Not only is it a good recreation of the area, but it will even play the Halo 2 theme when you’re on it. For all the trouble the Story Mode gave me, this is a cool reward for beating it.

But does it make up for the difficulty? in my opinion, no. Look, I have a lot of mixed opinions on Dead or Alive 4. I think the presentation and fighting is great, but the lacklustre content and the obnoxious difficulty are major hindrances that do hamper my enjoyment by a considerable amount.

I suppose when viewed as objectively as can be Dead or Alive 4 isn’t a bad game. The actual fighting is the most refined it’s ever been, the presentation is incredible and the content if viewed in a vacuum is decent enough. That Online Mode was really impressive for its time. I can see why some say this is the series at its peak.

Here’s the thing, even if I ignore the games other issues, the inconsistent tone in Story Mode, the content and the grind to unlock costumes, the simple act of playing Dead or Alive 4 is just a chore. The AI is so relentless that it makes playing through it feel like work, and when playing a game feels like work, it has completely failed to be a videogame.

I realise I’ve been harking a lot on the difficulty. Maybe a bit too much, but that’s what the game does. The difficulty is so all encompassing it overshadows the rest of the game.

I called this series a “Casual Retrospective” because I’m coming at it from a casual perspective. I’m no expert when it comes to Dead or Alive, I’m looking at these games as a noob; with the goal to see whether these games can be enjoyed on a casual level.

So far, I’d say the series is very casual friendly. Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate and 3 were both great fighter that were very easy to get into. 2 Ultimate had its own issues with the AI, but honestly it was just standard fighting game AI for the time. It was bullshit, but not as much as other fighters, and even then it was only a few characters that gave you much trouble.

I cannot say the same for 4. Every character is a nightmare, and the game is so much harder than other fighters out at the time. I don’t remember Tekken 5 being this hard, or any of the fighters that came after Dead or Alive 4. If anything, fighting games got easier after this. So Dead or Alive feels like a big outlier.

For hard games I always ask myself a question, does the game benefit from the difficulty? Does being difficult enhance the experience or take away from it. In this case it’s the latter. I just don’t see why the game needed to be this hard. Even if it was done to make players engage with the mechanics, there were much better ways of doing so.

If anything, I think it did the opposite. Because the AI is so aggressive you can’t really do anything cool or flashy. It forces you to use cheap tactics and that’s no fun. The other games were challenging, but they let up just enough to let you try new things and do cool stuff. 4 doesn’t, which sucks because I want to learn more about the game.

It is a fun fighter at its core, but the difficulty makes it, well, difficult to really get into it. Which is why, despite the obvious improvements made to the combat system, it doesn’t feel much better than its predecessor. It doesn’t let you get a read on how much better it is, so it just feels like more of the same.

I can see it. I can see the improvements and can even understand why for some it’s the best in the series. I cannot agree with the sentiment however. The game is just too damned annoying, and honestly, it doesn’t offer much that the other games didn’t offer. The only thing it has over them is Online, extra characters, and the Halo crossover.

However, for as good as all that stuff is, especially the Online, I cannot stress enough how ahead of it’s time it was, I would much rather play 2 or 3. I thought those games were far more enjoyable and had more to offer for their time. And when a sequel makes you want to go back to its predecessor, that is the greatest sin it could commit.

I did not expect to be this negative on Dead or Alive 4, but I suppose that’s just how it goes sometimes. I can’t really recommend 4, at least not as a single player experience. I just don’t think it has enough to warrant going back to it, but it is still a beloved entry for fans even today. There’s clearly something there that people loved, I just wish it worked for me.

Next time, we’re not looking at Dead or Alive 5. Instead, we’re going to take a little detour and look at a little handheld fighter that released between 4 and 5 called Dead or Alive Dimensions. Should be interesting, especially since it was made to celebrate the series 15^th anniversary. Was it a grand celebration, or was it a massive wash out? Tune into the next instalment to find out.