Well, it took a while, but someone finally tried to bank in on the success of Tecmo’s Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Oddly enough, the first company that came to mind when I thought about this was Acclaim! Snickering aside, all is not lost, my friends. Acclaim Cheltenham (creators of the XG games and the upcoming Alias) are at the helm, and despite a few miscues the game actually turned out to be okay, but startlingly average.

Obviously SHBV won’t stack up to DOAX in the graphics department, but it’s amazing how generic and lifeless each of the 20 or so characters that you can choose from are. They all seem like random people picked off the beach, and in this type of game, that really doesn’t cut it. The one thing that DOAX had was that the characters in the game already had established personalities. The environments in the game are pretty much the same way too. They’re nicely designed and are filled with lots of spectators, but they’re just there. They’re amazingly mediocre in their look, and that just kills the game’s atmosphere.

Luckily, the game isn’t nearly as bad when it comes to the gameplay. The characters are rated in three categories: power, control and speed. Obviously different combinations of these attributes make up for different kinds of playing styles. A player that’s tweaked towards speed will be able to hit faster shots, but they won’t be very hard, allowing for easier returns, whereas another player might have a powerful shot, but not a lot of control over where it ends up. Additionally the actual process of hitting the ball is much more complex than Tecmo’s offering. For receiving, setting and attacking you have two or three different options to use that determine how hard your hit will be, as well as its positioning. On defense it’s the same thing, as you can use a quick block for feint attacks, or deep blocks for powerful kill attempts.

Unfortunately it seems that the AI is the biggest culprit in bringing this game down. In some situations your computer partner and opponents are fairly competent, but often times they’ll have flashes of sheer stupidity that will leave you baffled. Players won’t dive for a ball, they’ll leave huge areas of the court open for a kill, and many times they’ll just stand there without even trying to help out. Sure, this problem is alleviated if you’re playing against friends, but it’s a shame that more work didn’t go into making the AI better for those times that you can’t gather a couple of people up for a quick game.

Although it was an admirable effort, Summer Heat Beach Volleyball doesn’t have what it takes to hang with Tecmo’s DOAX, or even the 8-bit Super Spike V-Ball. Yes, some aspects of the game are actually much better than the aforementioned games, but it is other things (especially the erratic AI) that really make the game more of a chore than an experience. Sadly, it's just one of those cases where all the well executed aspects are overshadowed by what wasn't.

· · · Reno