A playthrough of the hidden character Spartan-458/Nicole in Team Ninja/Tecmo’s Dead or Alive 4/DOA4.

A little while ago, I went on a long-winded rant talking about games which defined the Xbox and Dead or Alive’s attempts to make itself a staple of the platform. And, well, the reason I did that was because that sentiment eventually culminated in this character.
Spartan-458, or Nicole as she’s also known, is a Spartan from the Halo universe. No series quite defines the original Xbox like Halo. Hell, I even took the opportunity to finally play through Halo 1 and 2 in full while I was playing through Dead or Alive 3, because if I’m going to be playing original Xbox games I might as well go with the most iconic of them.

The Halo series is actually probably my favourite FPS series. It’s a lot freer and less constricted than most FPS series and has a huge emphasis on spectacle battles and choice. The first game sees a Spartan known as the Master Chief investigating a mysterious Alien land known as Halo, all while fighting off a theocratic confederation of aliens known as The Covenant. The Chief is a Spartan; a sort of genetically engineered super soldier designed to fend off the Covenant’s invasion of Earth and its space colonies, effectively turning him into a one-man army. The first Halo is a pretty brilliant game on the whole, but it does have its downsides. In terms of positives, the game is surprisingly open for an FPS and each scenario and level the player faces often has a number of different ways to tackle it. This variety is helped not only by the inclusion of vehicle combat, where the player can use both human and Covenant vehicles, but also by the contrast between useable human and Covenant weaponry. For instance, a shielded covenant enemy has an energy shield with only a small opening for the enemy to use its pistol. With human weaponry the player can shoot in the vulnerable gap with a scoped weapon in order to take out the opponent, or they can use a Covenant energy weapon to temporarily disable the shield and make the opponent vulnerable to all types of fire. The game allows you to freely mix and match different gameplay styles depending on your preference; you can hang back and attempt to snipe opponents one by one and play it safe, or you can rush in and take out the opponents on their vulnerable flanks with shotguns, rifles, energy weapons and of course grenades. This free-flowing, vibrant combat turns Halo into an experience which is always incredibly lively, thriving and more than anything else enjoyable.

The game has its drawbacks though, as I mentioned. For a start, it feels a little undercooked and is bogged down by a couple of the game’s levels, most notably those where you face zombie-esque opponents known as The Flood. Remember the gameplay-variety I was talking about earlier? It goes entirely out the window here, with tedious corridor shooting sections which would make even Deus Ex: Infinity War blush. Then there’s the fact that you can only use two weapons in those levels; the assault rifle to take care of the Flood squid things, and the shotgun to take care of infected enemies and flood pods. I mean, sure, it makes sense to kill zombie-esque weapons with a shotgun, but I’d be hard-pressed to say that it doesn’t bring the game down to a crawl at times. There’s also the fact that a couple of the enemy weapons are innately unuseable in this game; the Covenant rocket launcher will actually explode after it’s been dropped by an enemy, and the now iconic Plasma Sword will actually vaporise into nothing. Despite those minor drawbacks however, it’s still a fantastic game on the whole.

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