Gameplay (cont’d)

If you have the critically fast reflexes to play the game, everything happens appropriately. On the other hand, given the speed with which things happen, it's easier to just start pressing all the buttons together with the hope that one of your attacks will hit. Can you really develop enough skill to time the holds/counters when things move that fast? With practice, yes.

However, the problem with Dead or Alive 4 is that it was playtested by the championship players of Japan. The game is very difficult. The general consensus is that DOA4 in "Normal difficulty" (there's nothing easier) is tougher than the Very Hard difficulty of DOA3. It's not so much that the championship players were from Japan, but imagine if a FPS was playtested using Thresh or Fatal1ty to make sure it provides sufficient challenge. Fortunately, I had a lot of initial incentive to play through the game:

Dead or Alive 4 features SPARTAN-458, a character from the Halo world. Although it looks like Master Chief, it's really "Nicole" under the MJOLNIR armor. The quintessential move being the plasma grenade stick in lieu of a conventional throw. In order to unlock SPARTAN-458, you have to beat the game with every character in the story mode. With the increased difficulty of DOA4, this is easier said than done.

The story mode of DOA4 involves fighting 8 opponents with increasing difficulty. Along the way, you'll have mini-cutscenes which provide an underlying storyline to the game. Don't expect something like Amped or Need for Speed though, the storylines aren't much more sophisticated than Street Fighter II's. The ending CG videos are always well rendered although the content is hit or miss. Tecmo has taken a "Animatrix" approach to the ending videos and have contracted the production to various Japanese studios. It's an eclectic group of CG studios, most of which I had never heard of (Dynamo Pictures, Omnibus Japan, Studio Linda, Taiyo Kikaku, N-Design).

For a skilled player, going through 8 characters can be done in under 10 minutes. You can unlock SPARTAN-458 in less than 3 hours. For the novice, however, it's substantially more difficult. I'm a novice -- I never played DOA3 beyond the first week of release and so it took me about 6 hours to complete.

Those 6 hours were enlightening.