November is the time of joy, when violent and very exciting video games hit the American and European marketplace. We have Gears of War, Resistance: Fall of Man, The Legend of Zelda and plenty more. But a majority of these games as you can tell are pretty serious and requires you to perform quick thinking, and everyone hates to acknowledge a thought process. But there is at least one game that takes away from all the violent actions of video games and puts you into a more relaxing atmosphere and strangely it’s a spin off of a popular semi-violent fighting game. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is a sequel to its first game released back on the Xbox back in early 2003. This is a spin off of the Dead or Alive series, the popular fast fighting game that started on the Playstation and made its way through the Playstation 2 and onto the Xbox system, and ever since Dead or Alive 3, the series has been exclusive to Mr. Bill Gates’ system. Now while this title may not look like a game from the series, it certainly has a few aspects of the fighting games. Namely the women and of course what makes it what it is, the breast physics. What can a Dead or Alive game be without sexy voluptuous virtual women? Well in Xtreme 2, the game would be nothing. The game offers plenty of mini-games that show off some of the women’s sexy side, but its obvious what the message is displayed here, Sex really does sell.
Now when you first startup Xtreme 2, you will be given a couple options. First off is the obvious Zack’s Island which puts you into, somewhat of a story mode (although it’s more like a free adventure experience considering no character has their own story told). In the previous story, Zack obtained gambling winnings at the end of Dead or Alive 3, and bought his little own island which he named… Zack Island (how clever!). This little island is a tropical paradise with beaches, jungles and plenty of shops, hotels and casinos to go around. The first game had one main purpose, and that is volleyball. The sequel as you can tell erases the beach volleyball part of its name only because now, there is more to do rather that bump that ball. Instead of just making another volleyball game, Tecmo games went out of their way to make more of a mini-game title with up to seven different activities you can unlock. The game still focuses partially around volleyball, but now it’s all about the vacation feel.
When you start up a new vacation, you must choose a character, and each character has specific likings and disliking, such as Kasumi’s favorite food is Strawberry Millefeuille, while someone like the American Tina enjoys Seafood. This will play a giant role in how you play the game as you will be making lots of friends and partners who will send you presents, and vice versa. But when you start a new game, you will automatically receive a partner selected for you, someone who meets your best interest. Each character will have a different partner when you start off, but you can carry over you previous characters status from a play through. A game lasts roughly one sitting, depending how fast you are and which activities you do. This may sound like not that much, but… actually yes; it’s not that much but with all the achievements, choice of characters and activities, you can have some fun. On the first day though, you will be treated to somewhat of a tutorial mode, where your partner will show you the ropes. So she’ll introduce you to the shops, and compete with you in some mini-games such as beach volleyball and Jet skiing. After the long day you’ll be able to select which hotel you wish to stay at, and there are three available, one is the Gemstone suite, a fancy room that pleases characters such as Helen. There is also the Seabreeze Cottage which is found at the eastern part of New Zack Island with what they say has a nice view, although you wont be able to see anything but a still image of the room. Lastly is the Moonlight Reef. This is a well designed room with spots of coral on the wall, even though it’s a bit crowded; it’s a non distracting place to look at. Ok enough of the rooms, let’s get to some gameplay.
Now when you first start the game, you will only have three of the seven games open, Volleyball, Jet skiing and pooling hoping. All of the other games can be purchased in one of the shops for an amount of money. Each shop will sell different things, and with three different shops, there is plenty of variety. The Accessory shop is the first shop you might visit, as it has accessories that you are able to equip to your character or give to another character, this of course adds a bit of variety to your characters visual appeal. Zack of All Trades is a shop on a boat that will sell you some of the weirdest stuff that most of the characters in the game will actually enjoy, such as sketchbooks, laptops and funny enough, Xbox and Xbox 360 systems can be purchased. The last shop is of course what everyone would have expected, the Sports shop. Here you are able to purchase various swimsuits for high prices (that is why you might not be spending a lot of time in there). But this is one of the better stores as you can customize your character all you want in the sexiest way possible. Here you are also able to purchase Jet Skis with more horsepower behind them. As you get through the game and you race more, you’ll find it’ll become a tad more difficult so you need to upgrade to a faster and/or more durable machine. Unfortunately each machine ranges from five hundred thousand Zack dollars to two million, so that’ll be a good chuck out of your pocket. Sending presents to other characters also modifies with their appearances. Depending if they accept the item you’ll see a change in their look as they equip numbers of items to their collection. The shops are a major part of what you are able to accomplish throughout the game and will come in some use when you want to change your characters look from time to time.
The first and obvious mini-game you are able to access right away is Volleyball. Just like the previous title, you will be given an easy control scheme involving the left analog stick and two buttons. With B you are able to pass your character the ball with ease and she can do the same. A is the big button though, with this you are able to pull off plenty of moves, from regular bumps over the net or hard spikes. Timing is also a big part of the game because it will lead to either success or failure during a game. When serving you can do two attacks, the standard bump over the net or you can perform a more powerful jump attack like you see from professionals, but it is a bit harder to pull off. With this comes timing, so when you throw the ball up in the air you will be given a specific time to hit the ball before it hits the ground, or hits the net and you loose a point. When doing a power serve the ball will go off screen for a second so you won’t know when to strike it, giving that a slightly more difficult time to get around. When ever you accomplish a good serve or volley, you’re character will shout out “good shot†or “nice serve†something along those lines and you will be given an bonus 1000 Zack dollars that will be added to the final total at the end of the volleyball game.
The other commands of course are when the ball comes to you, you can press A to bump it over, but that’s boring, so best if you pass to your partner who sometimes will pass back to you, and you hold right and A (just like you would do to pull off a power serve) and you’ll float in the air till you hit A again, striking the ball. You can hit it hard; nailing the opponents or you can tap it softly over the net, catching them off guard. The final command is mainly a block but will come at a risk. Going up to the net and pressing A will cause your character to jump in the air, attempting a block maneuver. This is good if you have good timing and you are in the right place at the right time, but ultimately this leaves a big gap open for your opponent to hit if you are slow or go up too fast. The Volleyball mini-game in Xtreme 2 is the most enjoyable game although the only problem that was given was the camera angle kind. It sometimes puts you off balance as you won’t know all the time what side you are your partner is on, confusing you and leaving a huge open spot for the fairly decent AI in the game. There is also a lot of repeating phrases. Each character has a catch phrase but will say it over and over again. They do have a couple but you’ll notice them saying it numerous times throughout one battle. Online support is another major part of most games now a day, and looking at Xtreme 2, you’d think there was some. Luckily two of the seven games have online and multiplayer support, one of them is Volleyball. While this is nice, the game only supports up to two players on a one-on-one battle, with each character having an AI partner. It would have been nice to have a two-on-two game instead of relying on a computer to do your secondary planning. Like the previous title in the series, Volleyball once again is the most addicting sport in the game and you will find yourself playing it the most as it earns you lots of Zack dollars.
The second mini-game that will come up is titled Marine Racing, which is technically Jet Skiing. This is a new mini-game added to Xtreme 2 and plays a lot like an arcade racer such as Wave Racer. Here you will be given a Jet Ski (which you can buy better ones later on in the game), and you will race up to four people. This game is a bit more exciting than Volleyball as you can perform tricks throughout the race, tallying more Zack dollars at the end of the race. So really it’s not all about getting the finish line first, it’s also about pulling off sick moves. Sadly there isn’t all that much variety you can do. You can perform a couple moves by pressing left, right up or down and then X and you can do a sick back flip if you go off a jump, but that’s about it. Each move will gain you more and more cash, so pulling off tricks ensures you won’t be getting zero Zack dollars, even if you place last.
There are plenty of courses too. You start off in a basic course going around in circles, and then it gets a bit more complicated by going under bridge/walkways and going off jumps. There will be of course little guiders that point you in the right direction when you get lost and course buoy’s that will be located at the edge of each track so you don’t go out of bounds. Controls are fairly simple in this case; pressing A is the throttle causing you to go faster, pressing B you can look backwards and with the X button of course, you can attempt stunts. Unlike the beach and strangely jungle volleyball, you have most control of your camera so you can take a look anywhere you wish, this gives a bit more freedom and adds more vision to your character. Lastly pressing the Right bumper you can use your turbo, which will come in handy when going up against up to four characters. Better yet, this is the only other game you are able to play on Xbox Live, and this time it supports up to four players (should have been eight but what you going to do), and is going online is much better than going up against near perfect AI characters. When everything boils down, the second mini-game Marine racing is fairly fun, no better than Volleyball, but now what about the other mini-games?
Well the other mini-games are pretty much nothing compared to the previous two games, and that’s not saying much. One of them is the water slide. This is a, not so much fun but very interesting view at riding down a water slide. Your character will get onto a tube and ride down the slide. Here you take control, pressing up to accelerate and down to decelerate, and then pressing left and right to corner… corners. What’s sick though, is if you go to fast or two slow your character will be flailed from the hundred foot slide onto the so soft pavement. Hmm, I wonder why she is perfectly fine the next game. Now the biggest question, why is such a ride so dangerous? This is probably the most dangerous activity in the entire island and yet nothing happens to your character. It’s kind of funny actually.
Let’s move onto the next activity. Here we have Tug-of-War, a game you probably remember from your childhood where a group of people, or two individuals grab one of the ends of a rope and pull as hard as they could, testing each others strengths. Unlike what we expect from the title Tug-of-war, Tecmo had to add something interesting, so they did put it as one-on-one, but each character is on a float over water and the loser is drenched in the pool. Here you will once again be tugging on a piece of rope, and the winner will be awarded a point, and the first person to reach three points wins the match, this is not a test of strength, its more of a test of luck as you can pull or fake. When pulling back on the left stick you can pull your rope, here the other player can fake it so you’ll fall back into the water or both of you pull it loosing balance. By pressing right on the left stick you will fake doing the same to your opponent. This could be cheap though as if you only did a fake you could win with ease as the AI will pull the rope at some point of time. Lastly the button A rapidly will regain your composure, causing you not to plummet into the water. This of course will increase your chances of winning as it all depends who gets to the tug first.
Now let’s move onto a more sexual battle. What’s more sexual than those you ask? Well Butt battles! Yup, you heard it right; one of the mini-games in DOA Xtreme 2 is the battle of the butts. Here two characters will be placed on a floating device, once again in the middle of a pool where they must attack each other to gain control of that device. Here you use the left stick to attack the other girls butt with your own. Pressing the left stick left will do a regular attack, holding back and releasing forwards will gain you a stronger attack, angling the opposite direction your opponent is in will dodge, and pressing up or down will allow you to side step on the float. Wow, this is very exciting isn’t it? This is what you will be paying with those sixty dollars you have in your hand, butt battles.
Ah, now here’s a game that they have left in from the first title (to some extent), this is Pool hopping! At the poolside you compete with one person at jumping across the pool. There will be floating items in the pool on which you must jump on and beat the other person by getting to the end before them or if they fall into the water, you win. This is a fairly easy game as all you do is tap any of the buttons to do a short jump (one space) or hold it down (press it hard) to jump a farther distance (two spaces). If you fall however, you automatically loose. This is definitely a game you can pick up and play right off the bat, but that sad, it’s too simplistic you will not have too much fun with it. What they did exclude from the original game was time attack. Instead of going up against an opponent you go up against a time and you have to beat it. This would have been nice if they included that in the game, but a competition is fine. Now we come to our seventh activity of the day. Beach Flags is another simple yet very short game. This requires two characters to get on their stomachs and when the whistle goes, you run like hell. It’s pretty easy as you rapidly tap A to run faster and to dive toward the flag at the end of the race you press B… And that’s about it. That is basically the entire goal and challenge of this activity and most for that matter. The game does include quite a few interesting games to go through, but the two main ones you will find yourself selecting the most are volleyball and the marine race.
Each day will last three sessions, morning, afternoon and evening. After all the games you compete in that day it will turn to night time and you will head back to you luxury hotel. When giving a present or asking another character if she would like to team up will take one of these three times so careful in choosing wisely. When you do one of the other you will notice the other characters face down in the far left corner of the screen, here you can determine what her mood is with you. If it’s regular she is neutral with you and if there are music notes coming out of her head, then she enjoys your presence. Unfortunately if you give her something bad or something she doesn’t want, she becomes less attached to you. Once you gain trust from another character and she becomes your partner, you then loose your other teammate, disappointing her. Now getting back to your hotel, right away you will be treated to a knock at the door and a present from Zack or any of the other characters. You can open up any of these gifts by pressing X and going into your menu, Zack will give you a camera to take some good pictures or one of your friends will give you something you like or something back. Being in the hotel you can visit go and visit the casino, here you can bet away all your money you earned so diligently.
Going into the casino you will be treated to four different games. If you don’t know the rules to any of these games, don’t worry, we’ll explain. First is Roulette, no not Russian roulette, but the game you guess what the metal ball will land on in the spinning roulette wheel. Here you can guess if the ball will land on even or odds, or red or black, the higher the odds the more money you will earn if it happens. Obviously if you guess the right number, that is the hardest, you earn the most money. The second game is plainly the Slot Machines. Here you place a coin into the machine and pull the lever. The objective in this is lining up symbols on the screen with one another, this is extremely hard and you usually find yourself loosing more money they you are winning. The third and fourth games are easily the most popular games at the casino as you have a much better chance than any of the other games. First is Black Jack, this is a quick and easy game, basically the person who’s closest to 21 wins the pot. Now Poker felt a bit difficult as lots of the AI characters received plenty strong hands that we only could wish to see in this world (Four Aces my butt). The game is more complex for someone who hasn’t played it but fairly easy once you get use to it. Pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush and royal flush, all in that order from best to worst. Each game gives a lot of variety that takes you away from the tropical paradise and gives you unlimited time to go bidding (unless of course you’re broke).
Visually, the game is very beautiful in some spots of the game, but yet there are some tad bits that stand out drastically. First off the water effects are amazing, light shimmers off it and you feel entranced. Character models once again never disappoint. With the selection of customizable objects, models and clothing flow with a Japanese anime style. When going into shops and different environments, each location has a beautiful look to them and shows off some of the power to the Xbox 360. But there are a couple concerns when looking at Xtreme 2. While Tecmo is very known fro showing off some of the best graphics in a fighting game and even in the first Xtreme game, one thing they should have looked at more carefully ever since Dead or Alive 4 was the hair animation. Now the hair in the game looks fantastic, on short haired women. Whenever you have a character with longer hair past her shoulders (which is pretty much half the cast), their hair becomes a problem when it touches their skin. Their hair doesn’t flow naturally as it hits the skin and causes a square jagged look to them it may annoy you a bit, but if you got over it in Dead or Alive 4, then it shouldn’t bother you too much, but even so, Tecmo should have fixed this or looked more into it. We can only hope Dead or Alive 5 or any other DOA title coming out will be touched up. Also breast animations, this is strange as the game series is well known from creating this physics engine but now each character has more of a bounce to them… and this isn’t just a little jiggle but these things move constantly trying to keep up with the characters movements. Even when a character moves an inch these things bounce. I’m not sure if its suppose to do that in real life but they really are putting a more sexual feel towards the game, more than there already was. Overall visuals are what expect from Team Ninja and Tecmo, great! But the thing is, they seriously need to work on that hair animation and collision detection before adding it to another game.
Now sound in the game ranges from good to decent. The music tracks in the game are fairly good as they catch the mood but it’s very strange to hear Hilary Duff singing in a Japanese game like this. There are plenty of different music tracks from soft to punk styles to choose from at the radio center, and each are set to a specific time of the day. But this can get a bit annoying as you will hear the songs over and over again each day so it may not be the best thing. Voice acting, well this is the first Dead or Alive with English voice overs (excluding Dead or Alive 4’s Spartan character), and they range from good to poor. Most character’s voices are pulled out of a stereo-typical bag, with Tina the American having a southern accent and Helena having a high pitched French voice. And of course Christie and a strong angry British accent, which is actually far better than those two. All the other characters have regular voices, not Japanese or anything, more regular to people you would find around you. For being the first DOA with English voices, it did a pretty good job, but just the fact some characters constantly repeat a phrase over and over again can get on your nerves. Other than that, the sound of a Jet Ski and water rushing by all sounds what you would expect. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 truly gives off a good voice cast and some soothing music.
Now after everything, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is basically the original title but with better graphics and a little more variety. This is a good thing but some of the new activities are way to short and end up being ignored. While it’s nice to see Team Ninja trying and taking a break from creating their hack and slash or fighting games and creating a more laid back title, the game could have been polished up before it was released. Its seasons greetings, and Xtreme 2 is still on plenty of gamer’s wish list and it should be. The game performs excellent, with good graphics and plenty to do in two weeks on Zack’s Island. But with its jagged hair animation they tried too hard to accomplish and its shallow gameplay mechanics, the game isn’t a masterpiece what’s so ever but still a relaxing experience.
