Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

"OverHyped And UnderDeveloped"

The much anticipated game of the year. I purchased my copy as soon as they had it in the store. Eager to get home and play my game I now wish I had waited for all my friends to play it first before purchasing. The game is overhyped and lacks sorely in depth. This would be the classic game where good graphics do not necessarily make a game better.

Graphics 10/10

Absolutely Gorgeous. There hasn't been many games that beat DOA in terms of shear beauty of the images. The girls are superbly animated with no clipping or slowdown at all. The background itself is absolutely beautiful to with the water looking very life like one could hardly tell the difference. The clothings are also multiple and imaginative.

Sounds. 9/10

Not much to say for sounds except they are well synced and very accurate. I do of course am preturbed that tecmo didn't go the extra effort to dub the voice actresses and make that part of the options.

Music 7/10

This is just a personal taste as I only liked 1 of the songs on the album and the rest of them got really annoying. However a good thing is that the game allows you get play songs off your xbox. However that is an xbox feature and not part of the purchased game.

Menus 9/10

The menus are well laid out and designed for simplistic navigation. It's both clean and easy to use. No major compliants here. A minor gripe comes with when zack gives you a gift. Obviously if I have no where near the completed set in my collection I'm going to open everything he gives me.. might as well just come unwrapped. But that's a minor peave.

Gameplay 6/10

The only gameplay I will talk about is the volleyball aspect as the minigame is both pathetic and completely retarded. The volleyball is a slight learning curve to get the timings down pat. After you get the timings down the game is acutally pretty enjoyable which is acutally the only saving grace. However at times I feel that the vball game itself could have been a mini game in another game that has been better developed. There are no blazing balls when you do a super spike. The girls can't do any of their special moves available to them in DOA3. Adding features like those would have greatly enhanced the game play. A major annoyance that really lowered my view about the game was the fact that certain characters absolutely can not get a partner. Or if they do the partner leaves ina few days leaving me wasting my time trying to run through the tiresome mini game and gambling to buy a partner some stupid gifts. That's a complete waste of my time and I absoltuely do not enjoy that aspect of the game. I could care less to waste my time figuring out what hitomi likes and buying it for her only to see her throw it away the next day.

Replay value 4/10

This game offers almost no significant replay value at all except looking at the girls which I consider very weak. Granted there's always the bikinis to go after. However once you get all the bikinis for one character.. I personally have no patience doing the same repetitive thing over and over again. The worst part of this game is the mini game. Zelda costs 50$ to buy and it comes with well over 10 minigames through out the world. My pathetic Mario Tennis for my gameboy which only costs me 20$ has 5 mini games included. Why a 50$ XBox game only has 1 mini game is beyond me. Perhaps they dont realize the silliness of jumping floating boxes but I do. The girls don't jiggle when they jump and you don't see them wet when they fall in. It adds absolutely no fun value to the game at all and unfortunately it's the only way to get money if you have none and don't have a partner. What they should have done was add things like a mini camp where you can practice your serves, sets and spikes to help improve your game. They should have also added a mini game where you have all the girls standing around the circle playing a game like hacki sack with a volleyball. The lack of any depth makes this perhaps one of the crappiest games I've ever played.

Overall 6/10

6.. the total amount of days I'll play this game before becoming utterly bored and stick it in my basement with the likes of my real volleyball.
I personalyl feel this game is very underdeveloped and not worth the 50$ i paid for it. This is the type of game you'd goto blockbuster and rent. It lacks sorely in alot of the gameplay department that could have easily been put in by a professional software dev team. Hell If i had all the artwork me and my roommates in college could have hacked together the gameplay in 3 months. However I feel most people bought the game mainly to look at the girls. In that sense I'd advise just going to your local adult store and purchasing 50$ worth of pr0n mags. At least then you get to see more T&A then you'll ever see in this game and you won't be fooling yourself thinking this game has depth in it's gameplay. This game would have been better if they dropped the price by 20$ and made it an interactive screen saver like the afterdark series.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/23/03, Updated 01/23/03