Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

DoA Vollyball is a weird mix of game themes. Part Vollyball, part shopping, part Gambling sim. The game starts with your first meeting with Lisa, the new Dead or Alive girl She gives you a tour of the island, which is simple enough to navigate via a pretty map/menu system. Certain parts of the island are inaccessible during certain parts of the day or fortnight, and during the night you can only visit the hotel. Here's where the 'game' starts. The basic idea is to just have fun for 2 weeks. Do what you want. Play card games, spend all you money in the shops or play volleyball. The only real aim there is trying to get the bikini's you want for certain girls, thats it. This is where the main problem lies, the lack of an actual goal. If you were working for somthing it wouldnt be so bad, but apart from getting your girl into some skimpy bikini, which is hardly rewarding considering they arent even real women :| The actual Vollyball is the highlight of the game. Control is simple with the left stick moving your girl, the right stick positioning your partner and the A and B buttons used for attack and 'set-up'. The Xbox controller's analogue buttons come into play, with two levels of input allowing a range of serves, spikes, passes, feints and blocks when combined with different analogue stick inputs. Its simple enough to get into, but not too simple that it doesnt remain fun. In 2 player it definatly shines alot more. Why there isnt 4 player ill never know as it would have been PERFECT. A nice little addition is the the 'Hopping Game!' It's basically designed to teach you how to use the analogue buttons for the main volleyball segment, your character carefully hops across a series of swimming floats to cross the pool. Some are close together, some are far apart and a quick, rhythmic crossing is rewarded with bonus money. Once each day is done, you return to the hotel for the night where you will receive a gift from Zack, which will be a random gift from one of the stores, or a video featuring clips, commercials, tech demos and the like from other Team Ninja games, such as the forthcoming Ninja Gaiden. You also get the opportunity to send gifts to the girls you like and also to manage your items in the collection before going to bed to sleep in preparation for tomorrow. You can also spend your hard-earned monies in the casino. Here, 4 games are available; Roulette, Poker, Blackjack and Slot Machines.

Graphics

Those expecting Dead or Alive 3-quality graphics will be a little disappointed by XVB on the whole. Characters have a little less detail than they were in DoA3. Not that Xtreme isn't a good looking game - it's MUCH better than a large number of the games released on Xbox in the last year - but comparing the areas in Xtreme to those found in DoA3 shows a distinct lack of care, with the jungle stage featuring some of the most blatant use of scrappy, rotating sprites for background plants since the N64 days. Adding to these problems are the very visible jaggies, which is not something you'd expect to be seeing in a second-generation Xbox title and certainly not something you'd expect from the follow-up to possibly the most beautiful game on the system. Though when you get to around sunset, everything does look a fair bit better, especially the water around the poolside .

Sound

Many players will certainly choose to visit the Radio Station immediately to apply their personal soundtrack from the hard drive as although the music is deliberatly cheery (featuring the likes of B*Witched, Spice Girls, Bob Marley and Christina Aguilera) and fits the game perfectly, they will get on your nerves after a while, even if you like that kind of music (god help anyone who likes B*Witched!)

Lifespan

It'll last as long as you want it to last. There is no end, so you can play it until you're sick of it. Its really hard to put a time on it, but id say after a couple of weeks you probabily wont play it much again.

Overall Summary

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball is a hard game to recommend. If you aren't interested in getting off over polygon breasts, you'll be bored quickly. If you're after a decent arcade sports game, you'll be seriously disappointed. For every gaming element available here there is at least one game that does it better. For collecting things we have Pokemon and Shenmue, for volleyball we have Beach Spikers, for maintaining relationships we have Smackdown! Shut Your Mouth and for gambling we have the countless Caesars Palace titles that have been released over the last three generations of hardware, not to mention the free versions you have already installed on a Windows PC. Although that's missing the point of it, it all remains true. If you're looking for somthing a bit laid back or a bit original, you're bound to enjoy this. Just dont go expecting anything deep.

[b]
Gameplay = 7
Graphics = 8
Sound = 4
Lifespan = 5

Overall Score - 6/10