My Dead Or Alive 4 Review

Posted by Kirby Turner on January 6, 2006

For Christmas Melanie gave me a copy of Dead Or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360. The game wasn’t released until the end of the December so I had to wait. But it finally came in this week and last night I got a chance to play it.

My review can be summed up in 4 simple words: My thumb is sore!

I must have played 8 hours or so last night. And yes my thumb is sore. The game is awesome. Story Mode can be frustrating at times but I was able to finish it in one night. The frustration is not a bad thing although it seems like it when you are playing. The AI in this game is incredible, which made Story Mode challenging and frustrating at the same time.

Like other Xbox 360 games DOA4 supports leaderboards. You can, for example, compare your best Survival Mode score against other players world wide. My current ranking is around 10,500 out of 25,000 players. I definitely need to work on improving that ranking.

As I have mentioned before, Xbox Live really makes Xbox 360 a great console. Having the ability to compare my ranking and achievement to other players causes me to play more, and in turn leaves me wanting to buy more games. Xbox Live is really the shining star of the Xbox 360 for the moment. But this review is about DOA4, not Xbox Live.

DOA4 comes with online play as well. I played “Versus” challenges for a bit last night online. Unfortunately I didn’t do as well as I had hoped. There are some top notch players out there. Online play was fun but the game play was a bit choppy. I couldn’t tell if the performance problem was caused by my DSL line or if the problem was coming from the DOA4/Live servers. I need to check the forums to see if other DOA4 players are experiencing the same choppiness. I have not noticed any performance problems with other Xbox Live enabled games so I have to believe it is not my DSL line.

Another feature I like about DOA4 is Sparring Mode. There is a feature within this mode called Exercise, which is a great way to learn all the button combinations for a given character. I will definitely spend more time in this mode to learn more of the advance moves and combinations.

Overall, DOA4 is great. The graphics are amazing. The game play is fun. The leaderboards are addicting. And online play is a blast.

Thanks Melanie for getting me this great game.


Posted in personal. Tagged in .