Along with Halo, Dead or Alive 3 was one of the Xbox launch's showpiece games. Tecmo's fighting game was more notable for its graphics than its gameplay, though it's still remembered as one of the system's standout games, thanks to its large environments and voluptuous female characters. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball puts an even finer focus on DOA3's strengths, trading in the fighting engine for some basic volleyball and casino action and swapping out the fighting attire for what is probably the largest collection of swimsuits ever seen in a game. Plus, almost all the male characters are out of the picture. Unfortunately, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball doesn't have the gameplay or variety to back up its graphical prowess, and the whole experience ends up feeling pretty shallow.

Volleyball is the easiest way to maintain a positive cash flow.

The game's story line is totally irrelevant and never comes into play during the actual game, but for completeness' sake, let's go over it briefly. The winner of the Dead or Alive 3 tournament turned out to be the flamboyant fighter Zack, who promptly took his winnings to a casino and turned it into an even larger bankroll. Zack then turned his stake into some property--the fittingly named beach paradise, Zack Island. He eventually lures the girls of Dead or Alive to his island resort by telling them that it will be the location of the next Dead or Alive fighting tournament, but the joke is on the girls, as they arrive and realize that there's nothing to do aside from lying around, gambling, shopping, and playing volleyball. So the girls make the most of their two weeks. That's where you come in.

At the start of your game, you're given the option to choose to play as any one of the DOA girls, from mild-mannered Hitomi to pro-wrestling cowgirl Tina. All the girls from the fighting game are here, and they're joined by a newcomer named Lisa. At the select screen, you can see each girl's favorite color, hobby, and food, information that actually comes in handy later on. Once you've chosen a girl, it's off to the island. Each vacation day is split up into a few segments, and you use a segment whenever you do something like talk to another girl, rest by the poolside, or play a game of volleyball. At the outset, you're given a brief tour of the game's shops and are dropped into a volleyball match. From there, how you spend the rest of your vacation is entirely up to you.

If you do well in the initial volleyball game, you'll probably already have a competent volleyball partner, but you can ask any of the girls to partner up with you whenever you see their icons listed next to a location on the island. Of course, the girls won't partner up with anyone off the street, and this is where their background info comes into play. You can purchase items from the shops and give them as gifts, and if you give the right girl the right sort of gifts, she'll eventually team up with you. Once you have a partner, you can keep her happy by giving her gifts. In actual practice, though, all this gift giving has very little impact on the game once you've spent the 20 to 30 minutes it takes to master the game's rendition of volleyball.

For a game that has "Volleyball" right in its title, you'd expect to see a reasonably good attempt at the sport of volleyball here, but DOA's version feels incredibly stripped down. Games in the main mode are two-on-two matches that are played to seven points, and either team can score regardless of which team is serving. Games that end up tied at six go into tennis-like deuce rules, meaning the winning team must score two in a row to win, though games will also end as soon as someone scores 10 points. When playing, you have limited control over your partner using the right analog stick, and your girl is controlled with the left stick and two buttons. One button returns a ball hit to your girl, while the other receives the ball and keeps it on your side of the net, letting you set up spikes. The Xbox controller's analog buttons are used to execute light or strong versions of both hits, but timing and good aim are what really win matches. The game does most of the hard work for you, lining up your girl for spikes and even automatically jumping when it's time to send a hard hit at the opposing side. All you need to do is point the analog stick at a hole in your opponents' defense, hit A at the right moment (or B, if you want to abort the spike and instead tap the ball around a blocking opponent), and hope for the best. Properly timed spikes, serves, and blocks will earn you a little extra spending money, making volleyball the easiest way to earn cash. Playing a winning game of volleyball also keeps your partner happy and, in some cases, can be enough to keep that teammate from leaving you, making the gift-giving system seem totally irrelevant.

Up close and perhaps a little too personal.

At night, you automatically return to your hotel, where you'll have the option to play in the casino. The casino features roulette, blackjack, slot machines, and poker. Roulette and blackjack are about what you'd expect--it's simple virtual gambling, like what you can play online for free. The game's slot machines are extremely simple and don't accurately reflect modern slot machines. They all have only one pay line, and you can bet one to three coins per pull. Poker is essentially the standard Japanese implementation of video poker, meaning that after every win, you're allowed to play a double-up game to risk your winnings for an even bigger reward. Annoyingly, the video poker's lowest non-joker win is two pair, rather than the usual standard of jacks or better.

While you can gain and lose fortunes quickly in the casino, its bare-bones presentation makes it a very lonely place to be. The casino isn't fully modeled in 3D--you're just given a menu that allows you to select different games. This really could have been a great place to throw in some more social interaction between the girls, or even with the elusive Zack himself. As it is, the lone casino interaction that occurs is at the roulette table, where you'll see some of the other girls' icons appear at the bottom of the screen, indicating that they're playing roulette with you, making their own bets, and so on. But all you really get out of that is the icon and some unsubtitled Japanese speech.