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Dead or Alive 4 is a fighthing video game released on Xbox 360 on January 24, 2006, developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo. So this is the 4th episode of the fighting game, famous for its beautiful fighting babes, created by Tomonobu Itagaki. Faithful to the gameplay of the series, Dead or Alive 4 offers great next gen graphics.

This new Dead or Alive has a wider range of fighters with a total of 22 playable characters including 5 hidden figures. There are of course known characters of the whole series, such as Kasumi, Ayane, Ryu Hayabusa (hero of the game Ninja gaiden), Gen Fu, Zack, Christie, Hitomi or Tina Armstrong, among others. In addition to these characters, 4 new fighters appear bringing with them their own fighting styles. Firstly there is Kokoro, a young and beautiful 17 years old Japanese girl who is in training in order to become an accomplished Geisha. She mastered the Ba Ji Quan, a Chinese martial art famous for its devastating elbow strikes. The second character is Eliot, a 16 years old English boy who is Gen Fu's apprentice. His style of fighting is the Xingyiquan, a variant of Gen Fu's Xingyi Liuhe Quan. Then, La Mariposa, who is in fact Lisa that already appeared in the game Dead or Alive Xtrem Beach Volleyball on Xbox, made her appearance in the tournament Dead or Alive. As Tina she practices professional wrestling and more particularly the Lucha Libre. The 4th fighter is a hidden character. I will not divulge his identity but I just can tell that he is a well-know hero that appears in a famous games series on the first Xbox.

Dead or Alive 4 is good deal more beautiful than the previous episode, and offers also a more subtle gameplay always based on a system of counter attacks. The timing is now far more important and we must learn to anticipate the enemy attacks successfully in order to be victorious. Clashes are also way more nervous and spectacular than before. The moves are performed with fluidity and speed, which can sometimes interfere with the readability of the action and make the counter attacks more difficult to realize.

More beautiful, more nervous, but less accessible than its predecessors, Dead or Alive 4 is in every instance a great fighting game, that does not disappoint fans of the series.

Dead or Alive 4 reviews