October 20th, 2007

Original Release Date: December 29th, 2005

Number of Players: 4

ESRB Rating: Mature

Genre(s): Fighting

Developer: Team Ninja

Publisher: Tecmo

Other Platforms: N/A

Website: Click Here

I don't play games as much as I should anymore. I'm a 21 year old male at the time of writing this, so I fit in the target demographic of pretty much everything happening in gaming right now, but I just can't find the time between doing this site and actually working at a job to find the time to waste playing overpriced coasters on the regular like most of my buddies do (*cough* HALO ADDICTS *cough*)..

Case in point, I've totally skipped over the Dead Or Alive franchise of games, even dating back to the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast editions. To me, the game's appeal was always it's exploitation of physics and the sometimes neanderthal-esque inhibitions of my gender by making bouncing polygonal mammories an explicit selling point. It's sort of insulting lol.

That's like trying to appeal to the female demo. by having the males fight in neon green g-strings with raging erections while they're lubed up in coconut oil. (Seeing Tekken's Heihachi in what appeared to look like a thong in Tekken 4 and in one cut-scene during the 5th edition was bad enough; I can't imagine a game featuring character designs based off of SNL's Ambiguiously Gay Duo)

And while it may be true that as gaming hardware has advanced over the last decade that other fighting games have introduced flopping fun bags as standard, I just can't get into DOA. I admit, I'm a Tekken fanatic with a minor in Street Fighter II Turbo. I've played DOA 4 on Xbox 360 and while it's decent, it's just a game of random luck instead of skill. It's incredibly inblanced and the game moves too slow for my tastes. I am definitely NOT a fan of the series.

First of all, the fans of this game are bumbling imbeciles. I've sat back and read the hype and hoopla over this series for years dating back to the Sega Saturn days of old and have avoided playing it for one reason or another. After finally playing it, I am so underwhelmed I'm extremely angry this half-ass game even has any fans to begin with.

If you like this game, you're either an ignoramus who likes to laud the fact jiggling mammories have finally made it into video game pyshics or you just suck a fat one at every other fighting game in the universe. Plain and simple. If I offend anyone, too bad. Somebody has to tell you that you're playing a shitty game that makes you suck at life and it looks like that person is me. Deal with it.

Why do I hate it? Well, for starters, after playing games like Street Fighter and Tekken for years, playing this makes me feel like I'm watching a bunch of old people trying to whack each other with canes at a retirement home after somebody changed the channel from Matlock. The games I mentioned are known for their break neck speed and tight controls while DOA is yawn inducing. It's also very one sided when it comes to juggles, and while all fighting games you can juggle a dude to death, here it seems like there's no way to counter. Killer Instinct had combo breakers atleast.

And who's bright idea was it to make block a dedicated button instead of simply holding back?! One of my friends brought it to my attention that block can be activated by pressing back on the D-Pad, but I still can't get rid of it on the face buttons. If the game developers were smart they would have placed block on one of the shoulder buttons instead. Having on one of the face buttons is the stupidest thing ever because I'm always hitting the button when I don't need to.

Yes, blocking in Tekken is ultimately pointless, but shit, atleast you know it works. In DOA, block seems like a random thing that works when it choses to work. In fact, all of the controls feel like that. For example, I press punch and it feels like 100 years go by before I see the action on screen! Coming from Tekken 5 to this garbage almost made me want to toss the controller through a window -- which I should have done considering it wasn't my controller, nor was it my apartment lol.. But I can hear you DOA snobs right now crying and bitching like "Well, Tekken is a n00b game and DOA takes practice".

Shut the fuck up.

While Tekken 5 is easy to pick up and play, it's easily one of the deepest fighting games out there. DOA 4 may very well have a deep fighting system, but you wouldn't know thanks to the sluggish pace and cramping control scheme. And while I'm comparing the two franchises, what the hell is up with the character design in DOA? You got 200 generic looking women with balloon tits and then you got guys that look like they got rejected from every fighting game series in history. Random ninja guy here, random big guy there, the obligatory old dude... And people enjoy this?

If you're good at DOA, congrats, you're good at a very horrible game. That's like saying you're great at sculpting things out of feces. You very well may be able to make the Statue of Liberty out of cat shit, but who cares? If my friends ever suggest playing this shit again, I am getting up and going back to my house to play Tekken. I'm not going to degrade myself to play such filth.

Pros:

• The female characters all have nice juggies that bounce accordingly
• For the period this was released in -- as a launch game in 2005, the graphics are pretty good.

Cons:

• Incredibly bland character design
• Wonky control layout
• Franchise in general is way overhyped