Greg Kasavin's review doesn't do this game justice... This game is not only great, it is most definitely superb!!!
Gameplay:
One of the [fighting] gaming community’s biggest gripes with DOA has been lack of depth. If I may be so bold, with the advent of DOA4, no such complaint should arise any more. Granted, you can still button-mash (especially with certain characters such as Kasumi and Jann Lee). However, that will get you nowhere near as far as it did in previous titles. There are some quite difficult move chains in this one, so exercise mode can prove quite challenging. My friend Acid1013, who’s more used to the circular directional inputs from playing more 2D fighters than I have, had to spend hours over several days attempting one of Hayate’s move combinations, the Rajin. Also, don’t think that you’ll be able to just take a few hits and counter someone a couple of times for the win. TN used the same 4-point counter system they put into DOA2U, which of course decreases your chances of countering successfully. A couple of things that have improved in this title vs. DOA2U however are that counters don’t take off nearly as much health as they did, and the timeframe in which you can successfully pull off a counter has decreased. Also, if you attempt to counter and mess up, the game penalizes you by stunning your character, leaving you open for more blows. Also, there is an increased ground game in DOA4. There are more moves available to do from the floor after being knocked down, and the player on the offensive can now hit their opponent on the floor with normal low attacks, in addition to the jump/down/floor-grab attacks that have been in the previous installments. As a result of all these things I’ve discussed, in my opinion the formula for a successful strategy in DOA4 revolves around juggling as the most important aspect more than ever before in a DOA game. This is especially true since they reintroduced a couple of aspects from DOA3, which include knocking your opponent hard enough to the floor to initiate a juggle and knocking them into hard walls which makes them fall forward and ready to receive more blows. Wall grabs are still a staple, and slope/cliff moves, which were introduced in DOA2U, are back. Also, there are now sturdier walls/objects that don’t break when an opponent gets knocked into them, but instead offers a new interaction with the environment. You can now jump over this obstacle and choose to use a punch or kick move or nothing at all, which may be useful against someone who is too ready to counter, leaving themselves completely open for you to rain down punishment. It is therefore much more important in DOA4 to learn how to successfully deliver smart, unrelenting attacks, much like other fighting games traditionally accepted as deep.
Balancing… Something Itagaki-san said would be much improved in this game in comparison to DOAU online… WRONG!!! It’s pretty freaking bad actually. The ninjas have way too much of advantage (an extremely cheap one I might add) over the other characters, as do the new characters (Kokoro, La Mariposa, and Eliot), as they are way too powerful for their size and speed. To top it off, these characters are also very hard to read, which is fine and is important to have in a fighting game, but in that case don’t make them so strong. There has been a balancing patch released since I last played the game, so I’m giving TN the benefit of the doubt here and am hoping that they have this issue resolved.
Alpha-152… THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE!!! She is the cheapest DOA boss that I have ever had the displeasure of playing against. She has every cheap trick in the book… She is super-fast, incredibly hard to read, and 3 times as powerful as any playable character; and of course, she teleports. The only boss cheaper that I can think of is Jinpachi (Tekken 5), because he can also suck your life into his life bar and has projectiles (x2, so if the first one misses the second is sure to hit, G** D****T) on top of everything that I mentioned for Alpha-152. The only thing he doesn’t have is super speed.
Graphics:
I got sick and tired of hearing PS fanboys harping on DOA4’s graphics on the forum, saying that they look exactly like DOAU graphics. They clearly never actually got to see DOA4 in action, whether in HD or not. Even in SD, the graphical advances are clearly visible. The problem is that these unobservant people were focusing on the wrong aspects of the graphics. Many people were expecting to see the characters to look more realistic. However, the characters are anime-ish. You can only make anime-looking characters so humanly realistic. Look instead at the flowing fabric on the characters and the stunning environments and how they react to the fighters; these aspects look more realistic than ever, and most certainly more realistic than in any other fighting game to date. Granted, this game did not push the Xbox360’s graphical limits and might not be on par with a game such as Oblivion or Gears of War. I will admit that there are still some issues such as hair clipping through shoulders and clothes clipping through the body; but these problems are miniscule, and anyone who has serious complaints about those two issues need to get over it because the graphical presentation of DOA4 is still far more superior than that of any other fighting game.
Sound:
As has become Itagaki-san’s custom, the opening song was chosen from Aerosmith’s collection, which is always cool imho. The in-game music is pretty cool too… it’s what you would expect. What’s the coolest however, is DOA4 great focus on sound effects. The sound effects in this game are better than that of any other in the series. One of the additions in this realm are cries of pain during the fight (not just at the end of the match) from the opponent being pummeled at the time. This makes for a more realistic experience, and I think it should be appreciated as such. The default announcers are kind of lame, but all you have to do to change this is go into sparring mode and complete the exercises for your favorite character and voila…now you have s/he as the announcer. I wish you luck if your favorite character is Hayate though, as you may have some difficulty successfully executing his Rajin.
Replay Value:
This game is choc-full of replay value. Whether you’re just going through the game and taking advantage of everything it has to offer or make use of its great online functionality, you’ll have plenty of hours of game play. With certain achievements to be accomplished, both in-game and online, serious gamers can keep coming back to it and seldomly get tired of it. There were some lag issues online and some balance issues; however, there have been a fix and update released that I haven’t been able to evaluate this far. Hopefully they’ve solved these issues. Anyway, I think because of its great online, this game surpasses any other fighting game in replay value.
In conclusion, if you are into fighting games and own a 360… GET THIS GAME!!! You won’t regret it. It is a superb game.