| The world tour has you creating a two
woman team using an impressive array of hairstyles, faces, sunglasses
and outfits. After creating your team you will then be thrown
into a series of tournaments. Where as in the arcade mode your
players are selected for you, in the world tour mode you will
only have control of one player while the computer controls
the second player. When starting out the computer controlled
player is terrible and non-effective in anything that she does.
So you will loose your first few games but at the same time
you will build experience points that can be applied to your
partner's different skills, such as serving, blocking and returning.
You will also be asked to praise and encourage your partner
based on her performance through the game. Your team work rate
will rise and fall depending on how your partner reacts to your
input. This may sound quite bizarre but it is also quite satisfying
to see you partner start from the level of a useless ass and
advance to possibly surpass your own skill level.
In versus mode, you're given the choice
of playing a regular match or three different mini games.
Beach Flags has you smashing the A button, Commodore 64 track
and field style, in order to sprint down the beach to grab
the flag before your opponent does. Beach Countdown features
a bomb with a burning fuse instead of volleyball. Players
must volley the bomb back and forth until the fuse runs out
or one of the teams drops the bomb. Beach PK is a basic spike
and return competition. With the support for up to four players,
a regular match can prove very entertaining but the mini games
aren't really that much fun.
Beach Spikers is graphically fantastic,
the player models look great and their animation is very natural
and convincing. The lighting has been implemented very well
giving sharp definitions to all the shadows on the court.
Another nice touch is the sand; the nicely raked court will
show depressions from the impact of the players as the match
progresses. Another thing worth mentioning is the camera,
Beach Spikers features a dynamic camera that constantly moves
around the court to give the perspective on the action and
most of the time it does a great job and it completely eliminates
any back court perspective issues that tend to bug most tennis
games. Occasionally though you will not be able to see your
side of the court at all, this will force you to use the mini
map at the bottom of the screen.
The worst thing about Beach Spikers is the
sound and typical to quite a lot of Sega's titles the sound
track features too many synthesisers and crappy electric guitars
although, the sound track is not as bad as the wailing sound
track from Daytona.
The in-games sounds are generally good, although when you
hit the ball at full power the noise is slightly hollow sounding.
The worst aspect of the in games sound is the announcer who
announces each menu item you select and in game he will comment
on every single shot, with only a handful of phrases at his
disposal this can become rather irritating. The only way to
shut up the announcer is to turn off all the in game sounds
effects there is no way to just isolate the announcer, which
is unfortunate.
Women's beach volleyball does not sound
like an interesting game, if you saw this title on the shelf
of your local store and didn't know anything about it you
would probably stay well clear, but you would be wrong to.
AM2 has been able to translate the sport into something that's
loads of fun to play, I would even go as far as saying it
is almost as enjoyable to play as Virtua Tennis. Beach Spikers
is enjoyable enough to warrant the attention of any player
looking for some fun and fast arcade action. Great!
8.5
Out of 10
|
