Dead or Alive Xtreme 2

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is a 2006 beach volleyball video game developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo for the Xbox 360. A spin-off of the Dead or Alive series, it is the sequel to Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. The title expands upon the activities available in the original, supplementing beach volleyball with additional beach-related minigames. A port to the PlayStation Portable, Dead or Alive Paradise, was released in 2010; it was the first project in the series to not be either developed by Team Ninja or have involvement from Tomonobu Itagaki due to his departure caused by controversy.
Much like its predecessor Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, DOA Xtreme 2 features a two-week vacation mode, where the player can indulge in a variety of activities. Each day is broken up into three segments (morning, afternoon, and evening), where players can perform a single activity during each.
In Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, players are able to play as any of the nine women present in the series at the time of the game's release. Each woman in the game has certain items and hobbies which she likes or dislikes, and these preferences influence her reaction upon receiving a gift. Characters also each have an individual favorite color, again affecting their like or dislike of a certain item (and the wrapping paper used to wrap it). Kokoro did not appear in Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and hence is a new addition to the cast of available volleyball players.
The game puts a strong emphasis on friendship; players (playing as one of the women) must befriend the other female characters by buying them gifts they enjoy from the various stores on the island, playing pool-hopping and playing butt battles. Doing so will increase the bond between the two characters.
The former "main event" from Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, beach volleyball is once again present. Similar to the original, players must have a partner in order to compete in a two-on-two 7-point volleyball match. The gameplay has been modified to make the game slightly more difficult and to add variety. While there are still only two buttons necessary for gameplay (pass/block and bump/spike), greater manual control is required as, unlike the original, the women will not automatically maneuver themselves into the best formation. In the online mode, two players can compete against each other, each having a computer-controlled partner. Lastly, the camera has been slightly modified to address the criticism that the one in the original game moved erratically or too frequently. The offline two player "Exhibition" mode from the previous game has been removed, forcing players who wish to play against other players to do so via Xbox Live.
An all new game mode which allows the women to race on jet skis, either offline or on Xbox Live. The game has been compared to the Wave Race series.
Aside from the main beach volleyball mode, this is the only mini-game which supports multiplayer play via Xbox Live, making all others single-player only:
Shopping is an essential part of the game, buying accessories, swimsuits or food and drinks. Similar to the original, the game features a casino which players can visit during the evenings. Once there, one can partake in several games, including poker, blackjack, roulette and a variety of slot machines (themed after each woman). There are also three hotels for the women to stay. In addition, regarding the slot machines, getting all lucky sevens in Christie's Slot Machine will unlock a clip with the winning character performing a pole-dance routine in the selected attire. A cheat code was discovered in the PSP version, dubbed "Emperor's New Clothes", which allowed the player to have the girls nude, although certain inappropriate parts are not shown.
The game features mostly playable characters from the Dead or Alive series: Ayane, Christie, Helena, Hitomi, Kasumi, Kokoro, Leifang, Lisa, and Tina. An additional character exclusive to the PSP versoon, Rio, is a guest character from Tecmo's Rakushou! Pachi-Slot Sengen series of video games.
The background story to the game is that Zack has resurrected "Zack Island" from the depths of the sea, where it was buried following a previous volcanic eruption. He has re-dubbed it "New Zack Island". The instruction manual details the differing reasons for why each woman has come to the island, while cut-scenes further flesh out the plot details.
Developed exclusively for the Xbox 360, the title runs on a heavily modified version of the engine used in Dead or Alive 4, allowing for new inclusions such as self-shadowing and new cloth simulation techniques. The Marine Race mini-game, however, uses a completely new physics engine, although with similar graphics.
As well as the gameplay tweaks (as compared to the original), various cosmetic modifications were made. For example, the female characters' individual breasts now have their own "physics". This allows each breast to behave differently, although this has been criticized for making the breasts move in an exaggerated fashion (i.e., they often continue moving for an unnaturally long time after a character has stopped moving and sometimes one or both breasts will freeze in mid-bounce). Additionally, the game adds a new "tan line system" in which swimsuits realistically block tanning; changing swimsuits frequently will prevent tan lines from appearing.
Instead of relying on a single game mode, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 contains a number of different sub-games. Starting with an initial pool of 42 different mini-game ideas, only a total of seven games (counting beach volleyball) actually made the final cut. During the development process, creator Tomonobu Itagaki stated that he would not be adding activities like trampoline games and wet T-shirt contests to the series. He indicated that he felt that this would come off as vulgar and "show the women in a negative light". Despite this, however, a pole-dancing minigame/clip was included as a bonus after getting all 7s with Christie's slot machine in a certain order. The English localization was overseen by Team Ninja member Andrew Szymanski, in collaboration with AltJapan Co., Ltd.
Itagaki had previously expressed interest in bringing the Dead or Alive Xtreme series to handhelds such as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable in 2004. The port was first revealed to he released for the PlayStation Portable in Famitsu in December 2009. A North American release was announced a month later in January 2010. Paradise is the first game in the series not to be developed by Team Ninja. Regarding Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, when questioned about it, Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi implied that he would consider making Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 if people stated their support for it on Team Ninja's official Twitter account.
On March 11, 2010, a DRM-free demo version was released on the Japanese PlayStation Store, and then distributed by Japanese website 4Gamer and other web sites. The demo features a sample of the game's Gravure Mode, where the player chooses a character, a swimsuit and a situation to take photos. In the demo, Hitomi is the only available character, with two bikinis and three situations. Unlike in the full version, the pictures cannot be saved in the demo. The demo can currently be downloaded on PSP demo specialized web sites, as well as in the game's official Japanese website.
The game was released in all regions during March and April 2010. In Japan, Dead or Alive Paradise had on its release, other than the stand-alone game, two different bundles: one costing ¥7,329 and the other costing ¥15,729. The first comes with a secret photo album, a soundtrack CD, an original Kasumi box cover and the game. The second one is bundled with all that plus a Kasumi figurine, which wears two different swimsuits.
Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 received generally mixed reviews. GameRankings gave it a score of 54%, while Metacritic gave it 53 out of 100.
TeamXbox's Dale Nardozzi stressed that while Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 has impressive graphics, multiple activities and nice artistry, the game is simply not fun to play. On a scale of 1 to 10, the game got a score of 6.7, while the first Xtreme got a much higher score of 9.2. A review by Hilary Goldstein of IGN shared similar opinions, suggesting that the added mini-games, including the Butt Battle and Tug-of-War are based highly on luck, relying on an arbitrary button press to counteract what one thinks one's opponent is going to do next.
It was noted to be too similar to the original DOAX for many reviewers' likings, stating that a large amount of the female characters’ animations were taken from the original title and simply tweaked to fit the new game engine. Changes to the volleyball portion, still the main attraction of the game, have apparently made it significantly more difficult. Lastly, certain reviews criticized the new breast physics, causing them to bounce independently when running or moving and continue to jiggle or swing even when the character is still, resulting in awkward sequences. Elisa Moses from X-Play commented on the breast physics saying "The boobs move independent of each other. This is both comical and a little creepy. The breasts seem to have minds of their own, existing on a consciousness separate from their host body." ScrewAttack included it on their 2012 list of top ten "games that make you want to bone".
In comparison, Dead or Alive Paradise has received generally mixed-to-negative reviews, resulting in a Metacritic score of only 38/100. Scott Jones and Victor Lucas from Reviews on the Run both gave the game a 0.0/10 rating saying the best word to describe the game is "pathetic". On the other hand, GamesRadar gave it a relatively high score of 7/10 saying on its verdict that it is "overall fun and deceptively deep."
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) classification has described Dead or Alive Paradise as filled with "creepy voyeurism" and "bizarre, misguided notions of what women really want." The original text was rewritten later and ESRB apologized saying the first post was posted "in error", considering it "improperly" and filled with "subjective language." Producer Yoshinori Ueda said that the game is not supposed to be softcore pornography, neither degrading towards women. However, art director Yasushi Nakamura also implied that if fans did masturbate to the series, Team Ninja "could consider that a success". He also said that Paradise was an effort to restart making the Dead or Alive series, as well as to broaden its appeal.