These girls playing volleyball take it to the Xtreme limits, word.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Graphics are absolute gorgeous, mini-games are fun..

Cons: ..the frustration of actually trying to win them, camera angles, partner A.I., short.

The Bottom Line: 
Xtreme 2 may have the best eye candy there is, but that doesn't make up for the taste of it.

Author's Review
How can I begin a review on a game like this? A game like this requires a special introduction, announcement or something! Oh well, I'll just start it out the old-fashioned way! Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is a mere volleyball game, but with girls! How can this be enjoyable? you may ask, but no one can really answer it with an honest answer. Most gamers that play this game will be guys; it's a game for guys! Xtreme 2 has a very weak story-line that involves this island being re-found and this billionaire Zack is hoping to name it New Zack Island and have a Dead or Alive 5 martial arts tournament. Thus, 9 beautiful women have gathered to compete. That is all and did I mention there is no martial arts doing at all?

Relationships With Your Girls..no, there is no lesbian sex scenes
So the story is pretty much the lamest thing ever and it's a shame too. If you think about it, if most gamers that buy this game are guys, what would they be looking forward to the most? The story or the women? Of course the answer is obvious! The main thing you'll want to do or hope to do is play volleyball. Sadly, to do that, you'll have to find yourself a partner and it is not easy. You must win over these women for them to play by buying them gifts at the Sports Shop, Accessory Shop and Zack Of All Trades whereas you can buy revealing bathing suits, hats, food, shoes and even a Xbox 360! Hell, you even can wrap them in a variety of styles and colors! What you buy for the women hopefully will they like or better yet win their hearts. I find "winning" them over to be annoying, but I guess if you didn't have that, you wouldn't exactly need to shop unless you're the type of guy that likes to dress up their women with lavishing gifts and almost nude bathing suits! Yeah, I know I was talking about myself. If you maintain good relationships with these girls, they'll actually buy you gifts and how you know what your relationship is at with a girl is questionable. For your partner, if you see musical notes when she's talking, that means your relationship is high, but for those outside you never know.

Variety Of Mini-Games That Are...Well, Naughty
When you finally get to the volleyball, it's your simple volleyball game. Four girls go at it with a ball, whoever gets 7 points first wins. Trust me, winning a volleyball is the toughest thing you'll ever do in this game. The other mini-games which is 6, are creative, fun, sexy and kind of hard to master. If racing is your thing, the marine race will suit you. Total of four girls race around the ocean, doing a variety of stunts, showing off your skills and hopefully winning the race by crossing the finish line. If racing isn't your thing, maybe you can try the butt battle where two girls are on top of a float and whoever knocks their opponent in the pool three times is winner. The good old-fashioned Tug-Of-War is here where you and an opponent pull two ends of a rope on top of floats and whoever pulls their opponent in the pool three times is the winner. Maybe you'll like to take a ride on the wild side with the water slide. This is a solo mini-game where you ride a float down this roller-coaster water slide. Corner the corners right and hope you don't go out of the water slide because if you do, it's over. Pool Hopping is another solo mini-game, but it can be played with another girl as well. This is where you jump across these colored floats and you must make your way to the other side of the pool. Time your jumps right or you'll fall in the pool and that means it's over and the other girl wins. You can also press the same color button as the float you're jumping on to win more money, but thats harder. The last mini-game is Beach Flags where you start by lying down in the sand and then run across the beach for 20 meters to try and grab the flag before your opponent.

Enjoy your stay!
If you win these mini-games, you earn so much money for your performance. With this money, you can buy stuff for yourself or for the women. These mini-games are taken place at 6 locations on the island. 3 beaches, 1 jungle, 1 pool and a marina, each are very beautiful locations and you can go to them by a click of a button. When you first start the game, you are required to choose one from the 9 girls for you to take a "vacation" with and then later on, you'll be asked to choose one from 3 hotels. The Gemstone Suite, Moonlight Reef and my favorite Seabreeze Cottage. Here, you can sleep, give someone a present, view your collection/photos(yes you can take pictures of your character), receive gifts and go to the casino to participate in 4 games; Poker, Slot machines, Blackjack and Roulette.

Eye-Candy We Can Appreciate
When I mean eye-candy, I mean it! The graphics are probably the second best the Xbox 360 has to offer. The girls are detailed to the very spot; their hair sways and their boobs are quite realistic..to some degree. You see, their boobs seem to have a mind of their own, they move whether the woman is moving or not making you think something is going to suddenly pop out. The beaches are breath-taking, the white sand and the clear blue ocean is just something you have to admire. The jungle, although have less detail, is still gorgeous and the pool is exactly like the beach, except the sand! The interior however, is kind of not that great. The Seabreeze Cottage looks fine, but Moonlight Reef and Gemstone Suite lacks the polish of Xbox 360 firepower.

When A Game Has Good, There Is The Bad
However, this isn't a big problem, but the controls will require taking time to master them. The controls are in a simple laid-out fashion, but some activities require multiple use of one button or maybe multiple use of two buttons at once. Mainly, this is noticed much in the volleyball. You have three types of serving, but these three have different buttons and require use of the directional stick. May sound easy, but it's not. The rest of the mini-games are fine and easy to play, but still hard to master.
The partner A.I. is often dumb, just standing there while a volleyball goes buzzing past their head. You can control them by the right analog stick, but thats a chore to do and at times, they won't help block or even try to hit the ball. The other A.I. is just perfect, they're smart, fierce and hard to beat!

Another big problem is the camera angles the game uses; the volleyball game has one of the worst camera angles ever. When the right side has the ball, the camera cuts them off and only shows your side forcing you not to see where the ball is going or when the right side is serving the ball after so many times, it cuts you off and only shows the right side serving a spike and forcing you not to see where you are and seeing if you can make the shot. The Beach Flags has a camera angle that makes you think the flag is right under you, but when you try to jump for it, the camera shows you have a little more to go making you lose the game. The other mini-games have pretty decent camera angles and you won't lose because of the camera.

Another bad thing about this game is that the game goes through three stages in a day: morning, daytime and night. Doing two things in the day such as maybe giving someone a present or perhaps asking someone to be your partner fills those hours in no time! Before you know it, it's night and thus, the game is short. The game is about 15 days long(I can't really remember the exact number, but it's around there), and those days are up before you know it. You can actually finish the game in a hour or so, but you know what, believe it or not, the replay value is actually pretty good. You still have the option of playing again with a different girl, collecting items, buying new stuff and enjoying the graphics over and over.

Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2 has a lot going for it. The graphics are excellent, the mini-games are of a variety of creative aspects and fun to some degree, but I think Team Ninja forgot about the actual stuff that brings the "meat" to a game. The mini-games are tough to beat and the camera angles is literally hell making you lose a lot. Not to mention, the game is extremely short and the morning, day and night feels restricted. If you are a fan of the Dead or Alive franchise or even the previous volleyball game, you'll probably pick this up, but for everyone else looking for a real deep game, this isn't for you. The eye-candy in this game isn't worth all the frustration you have to put up with.

Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2 Information:
Genre: Sports
Rated: M for Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Simulated Gambling
# of players: 1 offline; 2-4 online
Difficulty: Hard to You'll be cussing out loud!