DOA4 Delayed

[Melbosa]

Source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/674/674152p1.html

DOA4 Delayed in Japan

Game to sneak in just before close of 2005.

by Anoop Gantayat



December 7, 2005 - Tecmo Japan announced today another delay in the Japanese release of Dead or Alive 4. Originally scheduled to launch with the Xbox 360 on December 10, the game was recently pushed back to a December 17 date. Today's announcement adds another two weeks to the delay, with a promised ship date of December 29. The game is still scheduled for a December 14 release date in North America, according to Tecmo.



No new announcement was issued as of this writing regarding the game's US release. When contacted this morning, Tecmo's representative had no comment. Both GameStop and EB Games post December 14 release dates.



As reason for the delay, Tecmo pointed specifically to the need to fine tune the game's online features. IGN, having sampled the DOA4 online mode a couple of weeks back, can guarantee that this is going to be one of the biggest selling points of the title.



Today's delay seems to have come quite suddenly. Tecmo has already started promoting DOA4 in Japan through a major television commercial campaign, and today, we saw this outside of Shibuya station in Tokyo:

Gotcha

[Shayne]

I find it very hard to care.  I never played the first, and Im sure i wont play this one.  What is the lure of a fighting game?

[Mr. Analog]

It's the purest form of head-to-head strateigic battle.

[Shayne]

I'm not so sure of that, most times its a button combination memorization challenge.  Ive played against people who can wipe me out in seconds by unleashing a torrent combo that i cant defend against.



Then again i dont play them much at all (less then 1 hour a year) as i find them horribly shallow.

[Melbosa]

It can be a button mashing experience for some.  Usually I loose horribly to those people, as I don't expect the randomness that comes with button mashing.  But then if you get people that are really good playing, you can be involved in some pretty sweet gameply.  I remember my sister and I playing a game on the PS1 (can't remember the name), and because we both new our characters so well, our match lasted over an hour, without hardly any health being taken down.  Was the most entertaining thing to watch, so I was told by those there with us, as it was just amazing how in toon we were with our characters.



This is where fighting games shine.  Not those games where one person just owns.  Those games where people have some much fun that time just slips by.  DOA series has always been some of the best for this style of play, as their combat systems allow for those strategic fighting, vs the street fighter style which is more about the combo system.

[Mr. Analog]

There are a lot of crude fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct that have ridiculous "combos" that are mostly unbreakable, and therefore aren't any fun because more or less they lack finesse and can be easily achieved by button smashing.



Truly great fighters, like Street Fighter Alpha 3, Darkstalkers, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Tekken Tag, Samurai Spirits II and Soul Calibur III all have brilliant fighting systems that require a certain level of dedication to master. You can beat the computer easily enough with button smashing, but go up against a player that not only knows their own character inside and out but also your character and you're in for one heck of a fight.



My favourites are the 2D Capcom / SNK fighters of the late 90s, they all basically had the same fighting system but there was so much character diversity that you had to learn the weaknesses of up to 24 different characters per game, learn up to 3 characters that matched your play style and keep practicing until your skills with those characters are as good as you can make them.



And the old axiom is true: No matter how good you are, someone out there is better.

[Shayne]

I perfer my head to head competitions to be a little more "large".  I'd rather play an RTS i think for that kind of thing.

[Darren Dirt]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned daboobies as a reason why they're excited about another DOA