EDITOR'S NOTE:
If you reached this page via a search engine with a search term that included 'hentai', 'ecchi' or anything like that...
You're a filthy little fucker, aren't you? Even by my standards. Get your hand off your cock!
... I'm not doing this review.
[Don't duck out on me, you no-good shyster. You have quotas to meet. Get crackin'.
- Ed]
You don't understand, Ed. I really can't stand this game.
[Bullshit! That didn't stop you reviewing Hard Head 2 or any of the other shitty games here.]
This is different, Ed. As a person who actually plays games, this offends me to my very core.
[You know what, fuck it. Out the chair, I'm doing this fucking review.]
Hey, get off! Don't kick me out of my office! Don't do this shit again, man!
[If you're going to be such a pillow-biting pussy about it, I'll review this fucking game.]
Uh, fair play, but could you at least do it in a bigger font?
[Will this do?]
... Yeah, that's fine.
I'd better warn the readers, though- this is Ed's second 'review' and does not reflect the opinions or political stances of the other staff members of Gaming Hell!
And by that I mean 'next time I'm getting a padlock on my office to keep Ed out'.
[I'd like to start this with an apology. Not normally my style, but shit's gotta be said.]
[Specifically, I'd like to apologise to anyone out there who likes this game and yet isn't a completely broken human being.]
[I'm apologising because from this sentence on, there is no mercy.]
[Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball is the biggest, most colossal waste of time ever peddled as digital entertainment. Nothing, in the vast history of interactive media, can even come close to the vapid, pointless time-sink that is this video game. Over-long Japanese RPGs with protagonists who need to go easy on the hair gel? At least they've got a story to 'em! World of Warcraft? At least that involves interaction with other human beings! Bullet hell SHMUPS that take several years of practice to even venture beyond Stage 3? At least they give you some feeling of satisfaction when you make progress! Sewer Shark-esque FMV dreck-fests? At least they've got shitty acting to laugh at (and, in the case of Road Avenger and Dragon's Lair, incredible animation)! What has Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball got? An incredibly shitty volleyball sim, an incredibly aggravating dating sim-esque portion, and nothing else. This is a digital version of peeping into the girl's changing room, and it's just as productive. In fact, anything, be it learning to knit, playing Touhou games, or reading The Eye of Argon, is better and more useful to the rest of society than this complete waste of fucking time]
[Unfortunately, contractual obligations mean I can't end my review there. I'd like to, though!]
[I'm going to have to actually give reasons.]
[So each 'vacation' (read: a single playthrough) starts with you picking one of the many girls from the Dead or Alive series- the popular one seems to be Kasumi for reasons quite beyond me (maybe it's that ominous 'age unknown' thing) but according to my half-wit writer cohort, the official DOA Girl of Gaming Hell is Hitomi, which is why she's so prominent in the screenshots- and then you're jabbered at by someone called Lisa who reveals the intricate razor-thin plot. Zack (Professional Dennis Rodman Impersonator, voiced by Dennis Rodman) has lured these poor unsuspecting (and in a few cases under-age) waifs to Zack Island (which has, among other things, a full theme park and a gold statue in Zack's image) to... Well, if the game is anything to go by, it's to make a pathetic attempt at seducing them by sending DOA-related VHS tapes. Thanks, Zack, they'll come in handy when I decide to buy a tape player in the year 2003 are you fucking kidding me. Anyway, the point is your chosen girl is stuck for 14 days, so while they're there, why not lounge around in skimpy clothing, earn Zack Dollars to buy skimpier clothing, and more importantly, play some volleyball?]
[Why not indeed! I'll give you plenty of fucking reasons why not.]
[For a start, the volleyball portion of the game is ass. Despite my best efforts I never felt like I was controlling the bloody thing. I could ask Hitomi nicely to hit the ball like she means it, but she wouldn't. The best strategy, which I formulated during my 30 minutes spent playing volleyball (which was just a fraction of my total playing time, as you will see) was to whack the B button as soon as the ball was on my side of the court to pass it to my partner, then when she passed it to me, I got right up to the net and smashed the A button as hard as possible to spike that fucker across the court. That's it. That's all I learnt about the controls- I think Pong has more complex physics than this. In fact, the volleyball is so basic, such a throwback, that you can play the game with one hand as it will automatically hit the ball for you. So you've got one hand for movement, and one hand to have a quick wank with, am I right ha ha ha I am the king of comedy.]
[But it gets worse- immeasurably worse, my friends. After a few victories, the computer players go Skynet on your ass, and offer no quarter, no mercy- they turn into volleyball machines and consider your success not only unobtainable, but unacceptable at all costs. Once you lose a few times (and you will) your starting partner (the aforementioned Lisa) leaves you, like you always knew she would, the turncoat shit. Once on your own, you can't play volleyball anymore- you don't have a partner, remember- so what you have to do is shower the other girls on the islands with gifts to get them to like you enough to play a few rounds of volleyball with. If you're super best friends with them, they'll even give you gifts in return, including new swimsuits, which is a bit weird but hey whatever. The problem here is that, despite my best efforts, none of the other girls liked poor Hitomi. I spent so much money buying stuff I thought they'd like, but they kept throwing it out, and every attempt to get them to partner up with me and share a bed (not really) ended the same- 'Sorry, I know you spent a lot of money on me but actually I kind of hate your guts so I don't want to play volleyball with you, or even exist in the same time-frame as you. Skank.' As such, you're basically locked out of the volleyball until you can rustle up some decent cash to buy decent presents and even then, since the game is ostensibly a collect-a-thon (gotta buy all those swimsuits, yeah!) you basically need monies and can't get it.]
[So what do you do now? Here the pain truly begins.]
[In order to get the pitiful amount of swimsuits on display in the screenshots on this page, I had to grind away at this fucking thing. And not the sexy kind of grinding. The other two outlets for money making int this game are pool-hopping and gambling. Pool-hopping is not some bizarre euphemism for sleeping around, but instead it's an incredibly inane 'press the buttons soft or hard to get across platforms in a pool' mini-game that starts out insulting (you'll have mastered it in about 2 seconds) but actually becomes a serious money-maker by the end (in a full day you can earn about 6500 Zack Dollars from it, over a sixth of the way towards buying that white-and-blue dress at the top of the page). The problem is, of course, this is fucking boring. When a day ends, though, you can go to the casino and participate in filthy gambling. Naturally this is an extremely good way to piss your money away (especially some of the wretched slot machines can subtract money from your total if you get certain combinations) but by Christ you'll need to use it to buy some of those swimsuits without ending it all in despair.]
[And so the pattern goes, as with everything in life... If I may paraphrase Manny Bianco from Black Books:]
[Play, lose, bet, lose, bet again, lose, take the drugs, lose, prison, DEATH.]
[So, OK, let's assume- and this is taking a lot of fucking assumption on my part because I don't know how anyone could play this wretched thing without clawing their eyes out in shame- you actually do like the volleyball action in this game and you do manage to get the girls to send you free clothes... What do you get out of it? You get the Gravure sequences, which are through-the-peep-hole action at its 'finest'- your chosen girl just cavorts around or does stuff like ride a bicycle or hump a tree branch in the jungle, letting her massive chesticles bounce around in what some might call a slightly unrealistic manner. Here's a memo, Tecmo- you were beaten to it by several decades by the guys who made those mutoscope/What the Butler Saw machines, little peep-shows that were a hell of a lot cheaper than the crap you're peddling. And peddling it they still are as there were two follow-ups in the form of Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 for the 360 and Dead or Alive Paradise for the PSP (note the lack of 'volleyball' in those titles- guess they gave up on that charade, eh?) so it's not like this game was a failed experiment- for Tecmo, it all went according to plan.]
[The thing is, it takes a lot of time and effort to get enough money to buy items in this game. I was just rushing this shit for these screenshots, and all I got out of it was about six swimsuits for just the one character. I cannot even begin to fathom how long it would take to get every particular swimsuit for every particular character- that's some painful stuff to consider. The thing is, I can almost see the point, you know. Almost. It's like one of those dress-up games you find on the internet (with less dicking) except that you have to unlock everything by hammering away at the game so hard that you might as well make it your fucking job. And, you know, while the argument that 'you could be doing something more constructive' could apply to any video game, at least with other video games there's some sense of, y'know, fulfilment. Like that time I got to the 10th level of The Pit- I was on fucking fire that night, man. Got a crowd behind me and everything. But with this, there's no point. It's just ogling, a hobby better served by the internet. In fact, calling this a 'game' is a bit of an insult to all games everywhere.]
[So, in essence, fuck this game, and fuck everything it stands for. Play Solitaire instead.]
Oh shit, that was worse than your last review, Ed! I'm not even sure we can publish it!
[I talked about the game, didn't I?]
Barely! This is riddled with inaccuracies and truth-economising... We might get into trouble for this!
[Come on, there can't be that many hardcore Dead or Alive fans out there.]
You said the same thing about Touhou fans, remember?
[... Well played.]
Anyway, that's enough from you for now. Back to your corner.
Oh well, see you next April Fools, Ed!
