Dead or Alive Xtreme 2

If you’re interested in a deep gaming experience, you have to look elsewhere. If you want to spend hours ogling virtual girls, buying them swimsuits, making friends with other girls and the like, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is exactly what you wanted.

The characters – despite the level of depth that there is in the subtleties of gift giving and partnering up – aren’t really women at all. Aside from the obvious problems with presenting such unrealistic body images, there’s something disappointing about the way these hypersexualized characters are portrayed as childish, vacant, silly, and vain.

Just like the first Dead or Alive Volleyball game I found that Tecmo did an excellent job capturing the spirit of vacationing this time with more to do on the island.

A pretty, but shallow experience. If only you could walk freely on the island, the game would be much more interesting. [Jan 2007]

While this is an improvement from the first Xtreme title, the game feels repetitive and some what boring.

If you enjoyed the first game, you might enjoy the second game, although the minor differences between the two games make you wonder if Team Ninja could have done more to differentiate it from the first game.

A nice game to look at in areas, but not overly fun to play. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is worth a rent to see what Team Ninja can do in the high-def age, but I won't be adding this one to my collection.

Think of it as a way to spend some personal time with the girls from the fighting game. If that doesn’t interest you, and you don’t have a thing for well-endowed video game chicks, you’re probably out of luck.

For those of you who simply want to stare at unrealistically proportioned females jumping around a beach with hardly any clothes on and performing sexual innuendos at every turn, then by all means grab a copy of this game and live out your fantasy with the DOA girls. Those looking for depth and a meaty game steer very clear as DOA is all about the visuals and spending quality time with imaginary women.

It's less enjoyable, more difficult, and at times blatantly creepy. [Jan. 2007, p.68]

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is the Mannhattan Project for video game jiggle physics. Sadly, this is not enough for Tecmo's dress up deluxe simulator for Xbox 360. [Jan. 2007, p.69]

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is pure and unadulterated fan service, nothing more, nothing less.

Although the visuals are nice and there isn't a better game out there for ogling digital women, the new mini-games are a poor excuse for added gameplay and too much of the first game was recycled.

Xtreme 2 may be tacky but it can be fun the first time through if you play it with the right attitude. You’ll even get some replay value with the multi-player modes but if you just want to ogle women you’ll save yourself a lot of money buying the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition.

The first DoA Beach Volleyball game was actually a good volleyball game and the girls were built to look like realistically hot girls. This one has gone to just ludicrous looking girls with little else to offer in the game.

It's an improvement over the first one, but is there enough of a difference to warrant buying it? Only if you're a fan of the series and plan to spend a lot of time collecting.

As always, Team Ninja has produced a visual feast, a truly attractive game, and for that they should be commended. Sadly, there isn’t much more here than the pretty graphics and pretty girls.

Your enjoyment of Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 will be directly proportional to your interest in lusting over ridiculously idealized polygonal female models.

The volleyball is worse than in the first game. [Feb 2007, p.82]

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 just isn't as relaxing, with its frustrating mini-games and flawed core game mechanics. There's still plenty of eye-candy to be had, but if you're looking for anything more, you may want to pass.

Utlimately, all that Xtreme 2 did for us is to make us wanna play earlier incarnations of the series' fighting games - and head to the tropics for a much-needed vacation. We've got a feeling that wasn't Tecmo's objective, but that's about all this one's good for.

This is worlds beyond the bar set by The Guy Game, but not far enough to garner any respect. Stick with the fighting games, if you know what’s good for you.

Even fans of the original game might be a little put off by this rather pointless and soulless sequel. The volleyball is still good, bouncy fun, though.

Anybody who suggests that the volleyball in DOA: Xtreme 2 is a good enough simulation to justify the expense either earns far more money than we do or is simply too proud to admit that animated bosoms float their boat. [Jan 2007, p.110]

Some will still find DOAX 2 to be a soothingly directionless or charmingly goofy, a game that feels numbingly pointless when treated like other games. But if this is you second visit to Zack Island, you may well find yourself wasting fewer hours than expected. [Feb 2007, p.79]

The volleyball part of the game is decent and racing sea-doos is fine for a whole 10 minutes but after that this game just gets repetitive.

From the reused animations and gameplay mechanics, to the god-awful gameplay changes, and finally to the worthless new mini-games, DOAX2 is a steaming pile of Team Ninja excrement. [JPN Import]

Even fans of the DOA might want to think twice about picking up a copy of Xtreme 2. Although the eye candy may send your eyes into a diabetic shock, that’s about all there is here.

In my opinion Itagaki needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with some new concepts for this hybrid dating sports game. Some more depth is certainly needed as the inclusion of water sports doesn’t accomplish this.

With such a desirable concept, it's a shame the game hasn't been fleshed out to any great extent. Hopefully future instalments (if any) can provide higher levels of interaction and playability.

May your future romantic disappointments be less expensive. [Jan. 2007, p.96]

Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 is what happens when you tinker too much with a perfect formula -- and not in the name of improvement. This is the Dead or Alive that, quite frankly, critics of Team Ninja have been hoping for -- a soulless, poorly executed title slathered in truly shameless fan service that not even those who would use it for dirty deeds could force themselves to sit through. It's as ridiculous as the individual breast physics that it entails.

Team Ninja has headed in exactly the wrong direction: more throwaway minigames, the same frustrating friends system, less focus on the volleyball. Instead, it winds up seeming just as superficial as the bosoms of its stars.

This game is a damn, dirty tease. No one will buy it for the volleyball and the jetskis. No one will buy it because they want a good casino game or a dating sim. This game’s target audience is people that want wank material. And in that respect, it doesn’t even qualify as softcore porn.

A surprising failure. There’s some longevity (for the really patient) in trying to get every accessory and every costume, and even winning over the other girls has its challenges. But the core games just aren’t very good, and there’s no discernable improvement over its Xbox predecessor.

It's the kind of game you should pick up in the bargain bin a few months down the track and even then just for a laugh rather than a serious game experience.

Non-games are definitely the 'in' thing at the moment, but Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 has gone so far into obscure territory that very few people will find much to enjoy, and that includes the bounciness.

Very pretty to look at and a lot of attention has been paid to female anatomy, but it has no substance whatsoever. [Issue 15, p.82]

The most frustrating thing about Xtreme 2 is thinking about all the time super-developer Team Ninja wasted making it. Every day it pissed away creating this nonsense is an extra day we have to wait for it to release its next proper game like "Ninja Gaiden 2." For that, we curse DoA Xtreme 2 to HELL.

There’s just no valid excuse for buying Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 when you could just as easily pop down to a sex shop and buy an R18 DVD, go online and scour the adult sites or just spend your money on a proper videogame.

When it comes down to it, value is the key element that ultimately ruins this game. What do you get for your $59.99? You get to look at polygonal girls in bikinis. That's pretty much it.

Poorly executed at almost every turn. The gameplay doesn’t enhance the visuals like it should, rather it significantly detracts from them. The gameplay is the desert you have to walk through to get to the oasis of the boobs.

The activities are largely pointless, gratuitous exercises in showing off the girls in their bikinis, and any attempt to give the game some sort of justifiable kleptomaniacal purpose is beyond insulting - even to serial wankers.

The controls and gameplay just plain suck, the girls are freakish, and the music made us wish we had an ear infection. This game is demeaning to women, who are treated as nothing more than toys here, and underestimates gamers in general.