Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

"Permanent Vacation"

Believe it or not, there are other redeeming qualities to this game aside from the obvious features. Chances are if you're reading this, you know the main selling points of this game. If not, find a picture of the box art. I'm sure this game has a considerably higher proportion of male to female owners than most games do and I'm no exception to this, but there are still plenty of things to do in this game if you're like me and aren't interested in performing unmentionable acts while looking at pretend girls.

Story - 2/10 - Lackluster. A bunch of girls from the Dead or Alive series have been duped into coming to a tropical island for various reasons, only to discover they were tricked. They decide to stay for the two-week vacation anyway. While bare-bones, at least it has any kind of story at all, I guess.

Graphics - 10/10 - Some of the best on the Xbox. The girls are all very detailed, which is the most obvious feature of this game. However, the locations are very enjoyable and believable for a tropical setting. The plants, landscape, and skybox all look excellent and make full use of the Xbox's hardware. Some of the locations like Bass Island and the pool are relaxing to even look at them. The light effects are excellent, with the sun being blocked out in a realistic way when something is in front of it. The only problem is the hair. The way the hair moves can be spazzy at times. Helena's hair often has a life of its own when it touches something, and it won't stop spazzing at such times as when she's laying on the chair by the pool. Everything looks great, but it's likely due to the few things that the game has to render. There are only 8 girls and a few places to go, none of which you even walk to, but I'll get to that.

Sound - 10/10 - Excellent. All the sound effects are appropriate. The girls have unique voices, although the dialogue is not dubbed, you can still understand their personality through the pitch and tone of their voice. Other sound effects like splashing or the sound of the volleyball being hit are as good as can be expected. The soundtrack is appropriate. While I would probably never have gone out of my way to listen to the Baha Men again or B*Witched for the first time, the inclusion of songs by bands like these really help to make the game feel like a nonstop party. If you don't like certain songs, you can choose which ones will play and which ones won't, and you can even set the frequency that songs will be played compared to others. And even if you can't stand any song included with the game, you can choose for the game to only play the songs you've ripped onto the Xbox, so there's nothing for anyone to complain about music-wise.

Gameplay - 7/10 - Good with some minor problems. The setup is interesting. When starting a new game, you choose one of the 8 girls to play as for a period of 14 days and nights. Once your vacation is over, you keep all the items and money and choose a new girl, or you can play the same girl again. There are 4 sections to a day: morning, daytime, evening and night. During the first three sections of the day, you can shop, choose to play volleyball if you have a partner, give presents to other girls, invite other girls to join you as your partner, play a hopping game at the pool, or go to an empty location and watch a scene where your character does different things like walking, swimming, or riding a bike, depending on where you go, what time it is and who your character is. You never get to walk anywhere, as the pool and shops are just menus, the hopping game is controlled only by the face buttons for the purpose of hopping, going somewhere by yourself or talking to other girls just lets you watch a scene, and starting a volleyball game puts you right in it. Shopping and looking at your items doesn't take up any time, but doing anything else will put you at the next time of day after it's over. At night, you can send gifts to the other girls, watch videos and go gambling. You can also save and quit, go to bed, and any time after your first playthrough, you can choose to leave the island which allows you to select another girl and start over as though you finished the vacation.

As you can guess from the title, volleyball features heavily into the game, being the main thing to do on the island. Of course, this is your choice and you can go entirely without playing volleyball and make money just by playing the hopping game if you wish. Volleyball in this game is generally fun, but suffers from a couple of crippling problems, the largest being the camera. The camera shifts back and forth and generally follows the ball, but the view is always skewed to show what the opposing team is doing. While this is important because it lets you know where you need to be to intercept the ball, you often can't see where you are, so it's no use. Sometimes the camera refuses to even show more than 1/3 of your side, so you will have no clue where you're standing. Also, the view takes some getting used to even if it works properly. I have a common problem of standing too high up, which leaves the bottom section open. When the camera refuses to cooperate, it can make some games unwinnable. I don't mind a challenge, but this is like playing a game of chess when you can only see a third of the board. The camera is just zoomed in too much, probably to showcase the jiggling. Even when the camera is on you, it won't show the back half of your opponents' side, which is a problem because one of the team members is usually hiding right where you decide to put the ball. Another problem is that some of the girls are just garbage as partners. The level of skill for them ranges from typical video game superhuman level down to someone you wouldn't even want on your team in a real game of volleyball. When Christie is your partner, sometimes she'll serve the ball so hard it goes straight past your opponents. Characters like Hitomi and Ayane perform like it's the first game of volleyball they've ever played. They often let shots whizz right by them or pass to you when you're lying on the ground after a dive and you have no choice but to watch as the ball hits the ground right next to you. Also, volleyball has a fairly steep learning curve. Since there are no meters or gauges to show what kind of power you're using, you really just have to sink or swim and figure things out on your own. The pressure-sensitive buttons figure heavily into hitting the ball, and it works well about 95% of the time. Sometimes you mean to really slam it, but it won't even go over the net. You can calibrate the buttons' sensitivity to your liking though, so this isn't much of a problem. Another issue is that the game is less about the skill of the players and more about faking out the other team, and your reaction time. Unlike real life, if someone gets hit right in the face with a super spike, the character will still pass the ball to their friend. The best you can hope for is that you knock the character down, but it never stops their partner from saving the ball. Therefore, the key is to fake the other person out. You can either spike it where nobody is standing and hope nobody dives for it, or if they jump to try to block it, you can just toss the ball over the net and they'll almost never be able to save it. You only have a second or so between the time they jump to block it and when you have to hit the button to avoid dropping the ball, so reaction is key. Otherwise, it's a matter of making sure not to mess up and eventually getting lucky. However, despite the learning curve and the general unfairness at times, it's worth getting good at volleyball for the sake of playing the game. It's undeniably the best way to earn money, and you get more money according to how low the opposing team's score was. You also get to be better friends with your partner when you win, which will make them more likely to send you gifts. Overall, the volleyball is fun and one of the better versions of video game volleyball I've played, but it's still certainly not without its own problems.

The other game is the hopping game. You jump across a series of platforms in the pool by pressing the A, B, X and Y buttons. This game is all about the pressure sensitivity, and if you get really good at the game, you can try to have good timing for bonus points. Platforms will alternate between one, or two or three in a row and have spaces between them. You can do a long jump by pressing the button hard, and a short jump by pressing the button lightly. If you press the button to jump to the next platform as your foot lands on the current platform, you can earn some extra bonus points, and you get more points for finishing faster. This game, while small, is nearly flawless for what it is. There are some issues with the pressure sensitivity, but just like volleyball, you can calibrate it to your liking, or even set one button for short jumps and another one for a long jump. The platforms change frequently and after the first week, there are about twice as many platforms, so the game never gets stale unless you don't like it from the start. Despite this being the only real game other than volleyball, you never feel like you've run out of games.

At night, you can go to the casino. There's not so much to this. You can play blackjack, poker, slots and roulette. You can make a ton of money on roulette, but it's extremely risky. Poker isn't typical poker where you try to beat someone with a higher hand, it's more like a lot of one-player poker games where the higher your hand is, the more money you make on your bet. However, you can't bet very much, so this is a slow gain. The slots have different payouts. Blackjack is blackjack, what can I say? I guess as far as controls, the games are excellent, but there's not much else to cover. Overall, I don't bother with the casino much, but someone who's interested in gambling might have fun with it. The odds are generally either stacked against you or have a slow gain, so don't count on it for profits unless you reload your save every time you gamble big and lose.

Finally comes the real reason I bought the game, the items. I heard it can take years to get everything, and it must be true. Unless my calculations are wrong, there are 307 swimsuits, 148 accessories, and 171 miscellaneous items to collect for each of the 8 girls. Each girl only has a certain set of each of these that she can buy, so the difference must be made up either by getting other girls to like you and sending them these items as gifts, or getting her to like you enough that she'll send you items you can't buy. Of course, since you can play as any girl, you're sending the gifts to yourself, so you can do this in an orderly fashion or just give whichever swimsuits to whichever girl you want. Also, girls won't accept gifts or send you gifts if they don't like you, and this resets for every vacation so you only have 2 weeks to get as many girls to like you as possible. This interesting setup makes for some challenging gameplay involving money and item management and a race against time. Knowing which girls can buy what items and also what items they like the most takes a lot of trial and error, along with following helpful hints like giving them gifts that are their favorite color.

Replayability - 10/10 - Huge. For the reasons in the previous paragraph, this game will keep you going for a long, long time if you like collecting things. If not, there's always the exhibition mode so you can play as any combination of the girls you want, with the added bonus of being able to choose from the outfits you've acquired in the main game. Also, the hopping game is always fun for a quick game or two.

Overall - 8/10 - Despite the image this game gives off, there's actually a good amount of depth and variety involved. The girls are probably the reason 90% of those who bought this game did so, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything else to it. The volleyball and hopping game are fun games with a lot of facets to them, and the collections will have you going forever. The graphics are wonderful, and you can add your own soundtrack, even substituting heavy metal for the included pop songs if you want. There aren't very many different things to do, but what little there is never makes you feel like there should be more. Overall, I'd recommend this game to anyone who doesn't necessarily need an epic story-driven game and those who don't mind taking a break with a game that has a relaxing air to it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/15/09

Game Release: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (US, 01/22/03)