Dead or Alive 4 -- Page 2

To make things even more interesting, you'll be treated to a special fighting arena inspired by the mega seller. While stark in terms of overall cover palette use, the level oozes Halo goodness thanks to its trademark visual style and includes some Dead or Alive specifics features, such as having a multi-tiered elevation system that allows you to knock opponents off ledges for extra damage.

Bringing Personality to the Online Experience
While Dead or Alive Ultimate successfully brought the series online, that didn't necessarily add any key improvements to the overall fighting experience. For Dead or Alive 4, Team Ninja is planning a mountain of new features that manage to spice up the online experience tremendously. First off, when you fire up an online game you'll pick an on-screen avatar and choose a theme for your match lobby. Themes include things like Christmas, Halloween, and even one that takes place underwater. Up to 16 players can occupy a single room and while two people are fighting against each other, the remaining 14 can watch the action via a monitor that appears in the lobby.

Surprisingly enough, half the fun of fighting online comes in the "down time" while you're not even playing. You can use voice chat to talk to other lobby mates or even type to each other if you have a USB keyboard connected to your Xbox 360. The real fun occurs in the myriad number of avatars you can eventually access. You only start off with one, but as you play online and beat opponents, you'll gain points that can be spent at a special shop.

Besides being able to buy up new avatars, you'll also be able to purchase new theme lobbies, accessories to dress your avatar up in, as well as other goodies. In fact, Team Ninja developed the store system to enable gamers to effectively unlock everything that can be had in the game strictly by playing online. So if you're an online junkie, the ability exists to never even have to play offline to earn things such as extra costumes or characters.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
If you already have an Xbox 360, do yourself a favor and grab Dead or Alive 4. Besides just being a faster and more enjoyable experience overall, the inclusion of some truly unique online features should have you glued to your shiny new console for hours. While it would have been nice to see some new modes (Survival, Tag, and Sparring are starting to get really old), Dead or Alive 4 is still hands-down the best installment in the series yet, and dare we say, maybe one of the best fighting games out there.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment