If you thought the boobs couldn’t get any bouncier, the outfits couldn’t get any more scandalous… You were wrong. Dead or Alive 4 adds a few new things to the series:

• Online game play
• A few new characters
• New environments
• (most importantly) Some new moves

Graphics: 10 / 10
The best. Pleasing to look at in more ways than one. The models are jaw-dropping and you can’t see the polygons at all. The way the hair blows in the wind is simply as real as it gets (besides the fact that these are Japanese anime-based characters whose hair never gets messy). Environments and backgrounds are unbelievable -- even the audience members in the background of the wrestling arena look good. The CG movies at the end of the game are beautiful. Watching Ryu take down a bunch of high tech jets with his sword and ninpo blasts was a pretty cool treat. And of course, when you think of DOA, you think of the scantily clad women…Well, they’re back, and more objectified than ever. (See Christie’s costume #4)

Sound: 9 / 10
Aerosmith on the soundtrack, like the last entry, is pretty cool if you’re a fan. The rest of the music is alright -- mostly a modern rock with a little bit of techno twist. Voice work is…Japanese. Couldn’t tell you if it sucks or not, but it does the job just fine (there are subtitles)

Controls: 10 / 10
Identical to DOA3. Works great if you know what you’re doing, works fine if you don’t. Just button mash on Y and B and you’ll probably do fine. But don’t worry, you can still annihilate a button masher if you’ve got the skills.

Gameplay: 9.5 / 10
There are quite a few new moves to the old characters, and of course the new characters present new styles. There are a lot of unlockable characters which will keep you busy for a while as a single player. A necessary new entry is online game-play, so you can set out to be the best in the world. The new destroyable environment items don’t really make much of an impact on game-play. But the new environments are pretty refreshing and innovative. As long as you know the basics (what buttons do what and how to counter) you don’t really have to memorize all the combos to be really good.

Overall: 9.5 / 10
This game is a solid sequel to DOA3 -- one of my personal favorite games for the Xbox. There’s a fair amount of new content and all the old stuff is made a little better. This game is probably the best vs. fighting game out right now. And if you get a kick out of seeing computer animated beautiful women, you’ll get a kick out of this.