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Quite how One-On-One Beat-‘Em-Up’s have managed to
stay in the top-field of videogame development over the last twenty
years is simply astonishing. A genre borne of inadequacy;
One-On-One’s simply exist due to the lacking technology of
computer game systems  throughout the releases of inspiring titles
such as International Karate and Karate Challenge+.
What appeared as a genre “upgrade” arrived in the late ‘80’s
and early ‘90’s with the likes of SEGA’s Golden Axe and
Streets Of Rage, coupled with Capcom’s huge list of
releases boasting titles such as Final Fight - heralding the
birth of the now all-but-dead Scrolling Beat-‘Em-Up genre, a genus
which very few developers seem to be able to get-to-grips with in
3D. To cast aside all this was one simple effort by Capcom that will
never be forgotten as long as the videogaming industry’s legacy
remains in mind: Street Fighter II. Street Fighter II
not only bought One-On-One Beat-‘Em-Ups to the forefront of the
videogames industry, but also, to the all-important consumers.
From whence a point-of-no-return into limelight and then
again perched on the brink of throwing it’s own death-knell, the
genre hardened it’s resolve as the move into 3D simply bought more
problems and a dwindling enthusiasm. The mid-‘90’s were a
troubled time as more specialised developers such as NAMCO and SNK
threw everything they had to increase sales of a genre revered by
the industry and once by the public - everything except fresh ideas.
The Tekken series proved simply that there was plenty of room
for improvement and consumers were ready to realise this, but only
after garnering enough recognition and devoting insurmountable
resources into a label with which there was little certainty. After
countless births-and-deaths, only six series across every format
under-the-sun emerge victorious, many successors by previous teams
simply trying to do the same thing, but in a totally different way; Tekken,
Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, Mortal
Kombat and, of course, Dead Or Alive, are really the only
franchises that can openly say they’re still profitable,
out of literally hundreds of character line-ups available in the UK
alone.
Dead Or Alive makes its claim as being the new boy.
Even at its fourth numbered edition, and after nine series releases
(including the intriguing Dead
Or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball),
the title remains the newest name in the genre big-boys. Less a
testament of the series staying-power, and more so to the
favour-ability for sure-fire-hits that most publishers in today’s
industry see as their mantra. But never-the-less, Dead Or Alive
is not a series that could be criticised for its complacency. And
this is where Dead Or Alive 4 capitalises once again.
Continuing from the trend set by Dead Or Alive 2 Ultimate,
Dead Or Alive 4 doesn’t attempt to remix the genre and
breakthrough new boundaries in the way that last year’s
unassumingly original DragonBall Z: Budokai Tenkaichi so
cleverly struck: instead remoulding the original formula into
creating a smooth flowing, technically astute and complete
One-On-One Beat-‘Em-Up. It seems pretty clear that Team Ninja
believe that they have already crafted a near-perfect rendition of
the genre’s finest with the simple observation that, at
first-glance, little seems to have changed throughout the last three
offerings. Dead Or Alive 2 Ultimate – a rendition of the
Arcade, DreamCast and PlayStation2 release having undergone a
ridiculous amount of refinement specifically for the Xbox - was a
seemingly marginal improvement over the Xbox’s early release, Dead
Or  Alive 3. Dead Or Alive 4 takes this one step further,
simply by being Tecmo’s first offering on a next-generation
system, whilst, at first-glance, not exactly appearing as a huge
overhaul of Dead Or Alive 2 Ultimate. But, as is often the
case with some of the industry’s greatest, beauty isn’t just
skin-deep.
The “enhanced” Story Mode is the first lack-lustre
envisioning of the series that comes to note. For a genre that in
the modern industry is more-often-than-not removed from it’s
Arcade roots, it seems rather cheap that One-On-One Beat-‘Em-Ups
can often be excused from offering a well-structured and
meticulously detailed Single-Player experience when so many of the
genre’s peers are heavily criticised for simply following-suit.
The enhancement that the Story Mode has undergone can really be
ironed-out into simply adding a few FMV Sequences, with
inter-changing episodes between all the characters – a feature
which will no doubt be argued by Dead Or Alive fans as adding
incredible depth, whilst it could just as easily be argued that
it’s plain lazy to repeat such FMV Sequences without any
modification what-so-ever between characters.
The title packs further Single-Player offerings in the usual
forms of Survival, Time Attack, Sparring and Team Battle Modes. Each
Mode offers little other than what has gone before, as is to be
expected.
The online features of Dead Or Alive 4 are really the
title’s selling-point. Although - when faced with either a small
selection of viewers or simply one slow connection - the title will
grind to an unbelievably disjointed experience in which a
twenty-second match manages to take longer than three minutes to
draw to a close, the new Virtual-Lobby System is certainly a welcome
modification which reaps it’s own reward, even if totally bereft
of originality. Matches, Tournaments and Leagues can all be modified
with the utmost clarity through the well-balanced Menu Screens,
making the online aspect unusually easy to navigate.
The character roster has been upped this time round, with the
addition of four new characters and, of course, the now well-known
appearance of Spartan.458 – a female Halo: Combat Evolved
veteran. The new characters blend well and, whilst the initiative
has clearly been taken from the appearance of The Legend Of Zelda’s
Link in the GameCube’s version of Soul Calibur II, the
title has also obviously mimicked to choice to adapt that character
to suit the game, rather than the game to suit the character, and so
the Spartan remains as balanced as the rest of the line-up. The
returning characters range from merely tweaked to totally
re-addressed. Kasumi remains as true as ever, whilst playing Ayane
may take some adaptation. The ease of movement overall, however, has
been limited. While at first this may sound like blasphemy, almost
like the lack the ability to jump in Perfect Dark Zero’s
Multi-Player, it creates tighter gameplay widening to more varied
combat, especially in the substantially renovated Arenas in Dead
Or Alive 4.
The Arenas in which the combat takes place have been, as in  Dead
Or Alive 2 Ultimate, an area in which major work has been
performed. Gone are the eccentric flashy lighting effects, replaced
with subtler Arena-wide real-time lighting, and the distance the
combatants can travel is unparalleled. Each arena generally ranges
from two-to-three screen-lengths to over sixteen; and are rammed
with both background and foreground detail. The Danger Zones return
and have been given some restructuring, but the Arena for Survival
Mode matches remains untouched.
As far as the next-generation graphics war is concerned, Dead
Or Alive 4 is certainly one of the leaders-of-the-pack. Whilst
the character models feature minor graphical touches to their
mannequin-esque glossy appearance and benefit from some of the best
real-time lighting ever produced from a home console system, they
remain very similar during-play to their Xbox predecessors. It’s
once again the Arenas which sparkle. With their multi-tiered
structure imposing some fantastic boundaries on both play and
design, the aesthetical quality of the scenery cannot be denied.
Rivers ebb and flow whilst leaves, cloth and hair blow in the wind.
The distinct total lack of any bugging or Polygon Pop-Up excuses the
singular Invisible Wall that comes into play, just. The title’s
sound-quality is also rather astonishing, but is let down by poor
lip-synching and the lack of an English language spoken translation,
for even the English characters.
While it’s certainly far from perfect, Dead Or Alive 4
is one of the best examples the One-On-One Beat-‘Em-Up genre has
to offer. Along with Tekken 5, Soul Calibur II, Mortal
Kombat: Deception and DragonBall Z: Budokai Tenkaichi, Dead
Or Alive 4 is the pinnacle of more than twenty of building on
the stunning performances achieved by such limited technology. In no
way is the release comparable to the evolution seen in titles such
as Saint Seiya: The
Sanctuary or DragonBall Z:
Budokai Tenkaichi, nor is it relative to the genre-distancing
seen in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but as a future-proofing
update for an already explosive series, Dead Or Alive 4
manages to hold it’s head high.
 
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