Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Xbox)

Summer, superbabes, sand, sun and Sangria.

Miioouw

When I was 12, I secretly invested in a dirty magazine. The shop owner didn’t lift an eyebrow when he handed it to me. On my way home I prepared my excuse about the magazine also being about instructive things like war, the mafia and maltreated animals. I managed to sneak it inside my house unseen, and underneath my sheets I could privately study the nice imagery. It was in the early days of the magazine and in the middle of it were the pictures of a naked and freezing Vivi Rau (Vivi who? ed.). Enchantingly close and yet so far away.

Nobody is freezing on Zach’s Island

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

30 years later. In front of my TV. There is no reason to hide under the sheets. My wife would only find it weird to see me lying there with my Xbox. Its one thing to hide with your GBA SP but the Xbox is something else, taken its size. On the surface DoA: Extreme Beach Volleyball is a show window for scantily clad girls. But even on the surface, it is more like Sports Illustrated: The Swimsuit Collection or Victoria’s Secret Catalogue than your ordinary pornmag. It is definitely decent girls shown in decent situations. They have their cloths on all the time. Not a lot of it but never the less…

At this time the serious gamer would probably like to cut to the chase: Is there a decent game hidden away somewhere underneath the attractive surface?

At first I got my holiday pay

Give me five!

Let’s start at the beginning. Zach (known from DoA) has won a zillion (just about) and is now living out his wildest dreams. He has bought an island in the South Sea and has invited all his girlfriends from the Dead or Alive tournaments on 14 days of vacation. This means that Kasumi, Tina, Hitomi, Christie, Helena, Leifang, Ayane and Lisa (the new girl) are invited. As this is a holiday, there is unfortunately no chance of seeing the girls fight. Instead they are bustling about, bathing, hanging out and just having vacation, and playing beach volley of course.

At the beginning of the game you must choose which of the eight girls you want to be during the 14 days. You can then choose to practice the noble sport of beach volley or you can just go straight to the vacation. It is a good idea to give the training part some attention. The girls play hard and you’ll be glad you practiced later.

14 days on an island? I’d rather stay on the mainland!

swimming pool jumping game

When you start your vacation you’ll notice that there naturally are other things to do than just play beach volley. The island has three little shops where you can buy new clothes, sports gear, costume jewellery, crème, perfume and miscellaneous more exotic stuff like for instance Uzis.

To buy all this you have to have money, which you can earn either by winning them in the beach volley, matches, in the casino at night or by completing a little swimming pool jumping game.

You can include the stuff you buy (and are given) in your personal collection. This easily makes collecting stuff an objective in itself. But as easy as it is to spend money on yourself, you will also have to use the things you buy as presents for the other girls. Why is that? Well, apparently you are the type of person who buys her friends. And it is necessary to have at least one friend if you want to play beach volley, and you’ll want to (after all the game isn’t called DoA: Xtreme Casino Xtravaganza) because if you don’t, you’ll miss the big prizes making you able to buy gifts. Now, it isn’t hard to just throw gifts around in every direction. The hard part is to give the right gift to the right person. In the beginning it might seem a bit accidental, but there is a quite ingenious system hiding in a flood of small allusions in the game, which can help you on your way.

Does this rouge go with my moustache?

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

Maybe it all sounds a little girlish. And it is. The Japanese have a long tradition of making games that aren’t games in the traditional sense of the word, but are twisted everyday life simulations, which on the Japanese market also appeals widely to women.

While I played DoA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, I often found myself in some pretty awkward and unaccustomed situations. A little disturbing but a great amusement to the two girls I share my life with, who were eager to deal out some good advice from the side-line: “Buy the red lipstick; it goes better with her eyes”.

The game is afoot…the game is a foot!

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

The core of the game is supposed to be the beach volley part, but this seems more like a surface build to hide a far from ordinary gameplay.

You control your player with the left stick and smash, block or pass the ball with A and B. At the same time it is possible to control how your co-player positions herself with the right stick. As this might sound elaborate, the result is not. If you consider buying this game because you are crazy about the sport, you should rather invest in Beach Spikers (GameCube) or Virtua Tennis (DC/PC/PS2). These games have a rock hard focus on the sport they simulate, a thing that definitely can’t be said about DoA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

Prawn! Give us Prawn!

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

Of course there will be those of you who have only read this far to hear about the sex. But there isn’t much to say. This is a holiday-sim…for girls…with girls as the key players. Yes, they do walk around in bathing suits and bikinis. Yes, they throw themselves in the sand and yes, you can zoom in and control the camera. Nice lighting, nice sounds, nice finish and as sexually arousing as looking at Barbie dolls.

If you on the other hand dig life-sims like Harvest Moon, The Sims and Animal Crossing, this is an entertaining pearl in your collection. Even if you haven’t tried this kind of games before, this first try on Xbox is a really good place to start.

If you are attracted to women, drawn towards them, longing for them, you’d be better off spending your £30-40 by venturing out to meet living, confusing women with a pulse.

It’s ok to be shy and if you don’t feel ready yet, there is probably some entertaining and stimulating magazine you can pick up at the nearest gas station.

Translated by Jonas Rasmussen.