You sometimes have to wonder what it is exactly that convinces people to spend the best part of £50 on a rubbish game. A game that doesn’t deserve to share the same shelf space as superior titles (ie virtually anything else) yet, due to clever advertising and big publishing muscle, it will probably commandeer an entire gondola in your local retailer in the first week of its release, and then a top-ten chart space for weeks thereafter...

... Alright, so we’ve answered our own question there. But for the more informed 360 gamer – which includes our readers of course – what is it that compels you to ignore the sage advice you’re given by every magazine, website and even that instinctive wrenching feeling in your gut when you pick the box off the shelf, and buy the damn thing? Is it a doubting Thomas complex? Is money burning a hole in your pocket? Is it curiosity? Or is it boobs? Does the sight of boobs on the sleeve make you want to buy a game in the hope that you might get to see more boobs? If so, you’ll enjoy the sentence that follows this colon: boobs, boobs, boobs and more boobs. Can you guess where we’re going with this review?

If you’re able to take your eyes off the busty babe on the front cover of Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2 for a second and pay attention to the text, you’ll notice that Team Ninja has dropped the ‘Volleyball’ part to leave a far more ambiguous title than its predecessor. No doubt this was because the volleyball part of the game takes a back seat to the extra mini-games that have been added. But this is probably an even more appropriate omission than they had intended, as any notion of a game comes a distinct second to the eye candy on offer. And that’s not so much a testament to DOA Xtreme 2’s sex appeal than its shallow gameplay.

DOA Xtreme 2 does, in fact, have a plot – albeit somewhat tenuously linked to the Dead Or Alive fighting series. The opening sequence sees Zack and his girlfriend, Niki, searching for his Atlantean isle in a submarine. They find it, shoot a missile from the sub into space, which calls a space station that shoots a giant ray into the ocean, that raises Zack island from the sea bed, complete with giant boulder plug stopping up the caldera of the volcano that sunk the island at the end of the original Dead Or Alive Xtreme Volleyball. Did you get all that? Not that it matters, because it has absolutely no bearing on the actual game whatsoever.

Zack went to all this effort to entice the nine deadly dames from Dead Or Alive onto his island under the pretence that there would be another DOA tournament there. There is another tournament of course, just not the series of bloody duels that the girls expected. Strictly speaking, DOA Xtreme 2 crosses the threshold of several genres: casino games, sports, role-play and some kind of sad voyeurism that only trash like Rumble Roses has broached, but without even the pretence of a game.

Having selected a DOA girl to play, there are seven different mini-game sports to choose from, all of which are fairly shallow, some which are mildly entertaining and some which are as dumb and dippy as the virtual bimbos that partake in them. Butt Battle is by far the most inane of the lot, and if you’ve any imagination at all you will already have a good idea of what the game is all about: two women (bikini-clad, of course) standing back-to-back on a short flotilla in the centre of a pool, bumping their pert backsides together in an effort to knock each other into the water. It’s a completely absurd activity and not particularly thrilling to play, but given that the girls are prone to gasping emphatically with every effort and the game is so openly suggestive, it’s surprisingly entertaining anyway, at least for the few times you play it.

Marine Race takes you off the beach and onto jet skis for a race around the islands. It’s a little more sophisticated than the other games, with stunts and a turbo boost that can be charged up by careful navigation between gate buoys, and it also lasts longer too. With mediocre entertainment value, it’s the best of a lacklustre bunch, which doesn’t say much for Pool Hopping, Water Slide and Tug- O-War, whose simple premise and control mechanics wouldn’t be out of place on some of Nintendo’s new Wii titles. It’s significantly better than Beach Flags too, which requires you to bash the A-button repeatedly in a race from one end of the beach to the other, and lasts about half the time it takes to load the game.

But ironically, the worst of the sports is Volleyball, which has been stripped of any real detail it had before. It now consists of two buttons, one for passing and, despite the numerous other buttons on the 360 pad, one for three functions: attacking, spiking and blocking. As if this wasn’t poorly realised enough, the automatic camera angles are awful, often completely cutting your side of the court off while your opponent attacks, leaving you to make a blind guess as to where your character is, then act accordingly. Each of these sports will earn you varying sums of the local currency – Zack Dollars – depending on your success. Most of the games earn you so little they’re a pointless waste of time, with decent amounts to be won in Marine Race and also Volleyball, if you can bear the frustration. But the big bucks are won elsewhere, and if you play your cards right, night-time will see you earn some serious cash.

If you feel like having a flutter (and we’d recommend it) your nocturnal pursuits should lead you to the casino. There’s only the basic casino staples of roulette, blackjack, poker and slot machines on offer, with a small range of stakes available for each, but it’s the high-stakes poker game that will yield you substantial windfalls. The AI is hardly comparable with a dedicated casino title, and your computer opponents often stake massive amounts on ridiculously plain bluffs, but it sometimes makes trawling through the daytime a bearable chore just for some rewarding poker action.

Besides all the island games, there is another facet to DOA Xtreme 2 – its role-playing side, where we discovered a deep conflict of interests. And yes, we can’t believe we used ‘deep’ in the same sentence as Team Ninja’s most shallow game ever either. As with Dead Or Alive Xtreme Volleyball, there’s the kitsch concept of befriending your fellow competitors in the hope that you might be able to partner up with them, while mollifying your current partner (if she hasn’t abandoned you already). There are various factors that can affect your popularity either way, but the best way to win the girl of your choice over is to buy her gifts that she likes. This is where it DOA Xtreme 2 really falls flat on its face. There are hundreds of different presents that can be bought and wrapped in a large selection of coloured wrapping paper in several locations on the island – yet you’re not told what each girl prefers, instead you’re supposed to rely on clues that are seldom revealed to you. Not the best-laid plan, considering this is a game so obviously made with guys in mind, and that the typical bloke isn’t going to notice subtle verbal hints made by women with perfect hourglass physiques in their skimpies. Besides, as the game finishes after 14 days, you cannot afford to hang around waiting for these clues to appear and we had to resort to a tedious process of trial and error. Even this method is flawed, as you’re given no indication whatsoever whether the girl is warming to you: either she rejects your offering or accepts it with a brief word of thanks, sometimes returning it to you in the evening.

Alas, this mishmash of a title doesn’t even try to aspire beyond the superficial; the most positive aspect of DOA Xtreme 2 being its visuals. There’s smooth animation, vibrant colour schemes and pretty textures in abundance, but the game won’t last you more than a day before tedium sets in. The saddest thing about this game is that it will sell reasonably well, based purely on tits and arse. So unless you’re as brazen about your intentions for buying Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2 as the game itself, and you just want a titillating 360 peep show, your cash could be much more wisely invested elsewhere. Like the entire top shelf of your local newsagent, several discreetly packaged mail-order DVDs or even half an hour at that back-alley massage parlour.

Ben Biggs