Tecmo has been showing off screenshots and videos for DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball (or DOA XBV for short) for over a year now, enticing us with its array of beautiful women, luscious locales and the promise of the first high-quality volleyball game for the Xbox console. Now that it's out, I can tell you that while Tecmo did a bang-up job of producing some of the most amazing visuals the Xbox has seen, the game as a whole just doesn't live up to its promise.

The story behind DOA XBV goes like this: Zack, the winner of the last DOA fighting tournament becomes insanely rich, buys his own island and sets up camp. He decides it would be a blast to invite all the lovely ladies from the DOA competitions to his island and have them duke it out in a new way: A volleyball tournament. The girls arrive at their hotel rooms and start playing in a two week long volleyball contest.

Gameplay

DOA XBV revolves around volleyball, hanging out, and shopping. That's pretty much all there is to it. When you start the game, you'll pick a character to play and immediately meet up with Lisa. Lisa is new to the DOA series, and acts as a guide and mentor in the early states of the game. She's a terrible volleyball player, but in the beginning, she's the only teammate you'll get.

Right off the bat, Lisa introduces you to the Accessory Shop, where you'll buy gifts for yourself and future teammates. You see, the only way to convince other girls to play on your team is to buy them gifts, and you have to be sure to buy them things they would like. Thanks to the manual, you'll know what types of gifts to buy for each girl. The items available at the gift shop vary from the inane (a steering wheel ? flowers ?) to the insane (a million dollar bikini !).

During the daytime hours of gameplay, you can either lounge by the pool, play a rudimentary mini-game (the hopping game), or head out for some volleyball. Playing the hopping game earns you some cash, but is too simple to actually be enjoyable in any way. You simply hop from floating cushion to floating cushion to get across the pool. Your jump is controlled by the amount of pressure you put on your A button. A solid press is a long jump, a quick tap is short. After a few rounds of the hopping game, you'll never want to play it again. Of course, the idea behind the hopping game has nothing to do with enjoyment, it's just a cheap and easy way to earn cash to spend in the aforementioned accessory shop.

Volleyball, which is meant to be the core of the game, is laughably simplistic. The A and B buttons control hitting and ball control, with the sticks moving your players around. The A button attacks, the B button is for passive moves, such as passing or setting the ball. That's all there is to it. As you read through the manual looking for any depth to the volleyball aspect, you'll be continually greeted with this quote, "press A (or B) at the right time to (do whatever) with the ball". Need to spike ? Press A at the right time to spike. Need to dive ? Press A at the right time to dive. It's a terrible joke played upon video volleyball fans the world over.

I actually found that 90% of the time, moving your character is unnecessary since hitting A at the right moment will cause her to run into the perfect position to hit the ball. By just pressing A "at the right time", I kept the ball going for 44 hits (my record) without ever once touching the control sticks. That's just unacceptable in my book. I'm sure they were striving for simplicity with DOA XBV's controls, but seriously, there should have been buttons for spikes, dives, and quick recoveries when a player gets knocked down. Instead, you're just popping the A button whenever you want an attack return, or B if you actually feel the need to pass the ball.

Along with the over-simplified controls, there's the scoring system, which is a gaping hole in this game. There's no out of bounds, and the only bad serve is one that can't get over the net. And with the simple controls, it's rare you won't get the ball over the net. Each game is played to seven points, with the server rotating after each point. Instead of one team serving the entire match, the server rotates to the side that scored the last point. Games are, obviously, very short with this type of scoring system.

As I've already mentioned, you start out teamed up with the abysmal Lisa, whom you must use as a volleyball partner in the early stages of the game. As you earn more money and status, you'll be forced to find other partners to play on your team. The trick to obtaining a new partner is to buy her lots of presents of her preferred type, and be sure she doesn't have any pre-existing animosity towards your character. The shopping component of the game is what you see in many Japanese "sim" type games. Personally, I found that it felt like one of those "Mystery Date Goes to the Mall" type board games designed for 14 year old girls. It gets old fast, though it is nice to see the lovely ladies in some of the skimpier bikinis you can buy them (and Hitomi looks cute as a button with the ball cap and sunglasses on).

If you tire of hanging out at the pool, shopping, and/or playing volleyball, there's always the casino, which you can visit at the end of the day. Don't expect anything amazing here, it's just basic computerized Blackjack, Roulette and slots. There's nothing about the casino that's compelling enough to keep you coming back, unless you're desperate to earn a few hundred bucks on occasion.

Overall, the volleyball gameplay was far too shallow for my liking, and combined with the whole shopping system got boring rather quickly. The casino and hopping games are a semi-pleasant diversion that tend to grow tiresome after a few rounds.

Graphics

While the gameplay is an incredible weakness in DOA XBV, the graphics are an incredible strength. The girls themselves look simply amazing, realistic in a toy doll sort of way, and their motion is very fluid. Whether they are jumping, spiking, ducking or falling down, the girls look more realistic than anything seen until now on the Xbox or any other console. The skin textures are also worth noting, as they don't have that rubbery look that is all too often evident in CGI characters. When you buy a new swimsuit for a girl, she'll appear wearing it the next time you play, which is a nice touch to say the least.

The Devil is in the details, the saying goes, and most of the details are covered here, with just a few odd flaws. When a girl moves in the sand, she kicks up little puffs of silt, but when the ball hits the sand, it doesn't always affect the dirt at all. Sometimes, a ball you've blasted into the sand will create no puff of dust, but a soft lob will create a small sand cloud. Another small detail that's missing is sand sticking to people. In many of the sequences, you'll see your girl rolling about in the sand, but the sand doesn't compress to her shape at all, nor does any of it stick to her. How weird is that ?

Sound

So between gameplay and graphics, we have two opposing ends of the spectrum, from very dull to amazing. With the sound, Tecmo's gone dead-center, with a great soundtrack, yet obnoxious voice work.

The soundtrack, as I've said, is really quite good. It's an entertaining mix of pop and reggae which keep with the spirit of the game. Sometimes a little heavy on the bubblegum sound, but overall, it's very good. The ability to use your Xbox custom soundtracks was something I really appreciated when the pop music got to be too much.

The voices, on the other hand, have got to go ! Who decided that they'd make a game, ship it to the U.S., and leave all the speech in Japanese ? Are they telling us that they could spend all this time on luscious graphics, but no time getting some English voice work ? The only English voice work in the game comes from Zack, who's played by former basketball star Dennis Rodman. Along with the squeaky Japanese voice work, there's the problem of variety...there is none. Within the first half-hour of gameplay, you'll have heard every phrase the girls have available to them. Annoying the player must have been a high priority for the voice actors.

Replayability

If you find yourself enjoying DOA XBV, you'll find plenty of replay in it by simply swapping out your character and playing the game over again. I myself was so underwhelmed by the gameplay, I couldn't bring myself to run through the whole game again as another character. The game just loops into itself, becoming a stale routine of shopping, relaxing by the pool, and playing some ultra-quick bouts of volleyball.

Overall

I'll say this for Tecmo, if they wanted DOA XBV to look good, they nailed it. Nowhere else will you find eye-candy of this caliber. But if they were looking to create a solid volleyball title, they missed the boat entirely by making the controls too simple and the rules too watered down for anyone to take seriously.

I'd be hard pressed to suggest anyone actually pay $50 for this title, though I might suggest you give it a shot as a rental. Perhaps you'll find some gems of enjoyment from it.

See more screens at Tecmo's DOA XBV web site