Outlaw Volleyball

"Oooo This game looks great, but.. so NOT fun"

Ok ok, so maybe a 6 is a little rough.... Hmmm... No it's not. My friend and I went half and half on this game because we thought it would be a fun game to play 2-player. We had previously played Summer Heat Beach Volleyball (or whatever it's called) for PS2 and had a lot of fun with it. Actually we played it all night. And this game was recommended to us by two other people so we said ok, what the heck, we'll get it.

Our first impressions were not bad. You can't help but be excited about the curvy features of the... of the uhhh.... the BALL yeah. Good details on the ball.....

Ok so ya got me. The girls of Outlaw Volleyball do look good. They obviously went to great lengths to please all the young teenagers who drool over polygons.

The gameplay seemed pretty simple after watching the tutorials. And the game seemed to move very smoothly just from watching those as well. So we decided to go into a 2-player Co-op exhibition game first. We put the difficulty on amateur and started our game. And from there it all went downhill. Now don't get me wrong.... I enjoy a good challenge from a game. But the things you have to do to actually score a point are mind boggling. No matter where we spiked the ball, at a full quality shot, the furthest possible place from where the cpu players were, they always managed to save it and spike it back. Even using the turbo special shot, they still somehow were able to make the save. This got very annoying very quickly. We went back and moved the difficulty down to Tour Skills. This made the game WAYYYYYYY too easy. The computer would often not even be able to hit the ball back over the net when they went for a spike. The change between Tour skills, and amateur is nuts.

Graphics: 8/10
The graphics are well done, the character models look great and everything runs very smoothly. The stages and backgrounds look very good too. I've seen better graphics on the Xbox though. And I do believe the graphics could be better than they are, so I give it an 8 overall.

Sound: 9/10
Sound is great. Would have given it a 10 if it wasn't for the fact there are repeated sayings while you are volleying back and forth. This gets pretty annoying hearing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again... and this is just for one point! Some different sayings and sounds definitely could of been put in here.

Controls: 8/10
Controls are nice and responsive, the basic set up is very easy to use. Not much else to say about the controlling really. It's good enough to not need a run down.

Gameplay: 6/10
Ok the game runs smooth. The control set up is pretty good, and easy to get a hold of. But my god, the AI difference between those two difficulty levels is insane. It's not really ''hard'' like they score on you easily. It's hard like there is no frickin way they could possibly block some of the shots you lay out.

Fun Factor: 4/10
This game is ummmm not very fun?! I don't like 15 minute volley's for one point, sorry. You would be much better off just getting the PS2 Summer volley ball game. It may run a little slow in the gameplay, but it's fun as well as challenging.

Overall: 6/10
This game looks great on the surface. And is half way tolerable on 2-player when you go against each other. But what's the fun in that?! I wanted a Co-op game :(

Save your $ and use it towards something else, like volleyball lessons. Just kidding! Use it for Outlaw Golf is you want to, that game is much better and challenging.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/08/03