It doesn’t take long for the gals to transform from vicious, high-kicking, spine-shattering death match rivals to giggling, mostly-naked volleyball sprites who prefer frolicking on the beach to kicking each other’s teeth in. It’s obvious that ninja training includes the bump, set and spike routine. Or maybe that’s only the female version of becoming a living weapon. That must be why Zack didn’t invite men to the island: They don’t know how to play volleyball.

Your first choice is to pick a character. The manual gives a brief bio for each, including their favorite color but focusing mostly on different volleyball traits like power, defense and technique. Each day is broken into segments which you can spend finding a partner and playing volleyball, shopping, gambling in the casino, sitting by the pool or just laying around the jungle. If you want to get right to a game, you can take your default partner and start playing.

The volleyball is 2 on 2, rally scoring, with no end or side lines. These are not options. Every game of volleyball you play will be played like this. The closest thing you have to game options is the choice of how many points win a match (7, 10 or 14). Even worse, there’s only one camera angle. The camera focuses on the side of the net with the ball, which is fine when you’re playing that side. But on defense it’s mostly guesswork to position your player. If the camera could be moved behind one of the end lines (if they existed) there’d be more opportunities to play the game strategically. As it is, you end up hoping you’ll be in the right place to receive a spike. If not, the best you can hope for is to be treated to a diving animation as the ball bounces by.

For those of you who don’t like to use pesky, confusing things like strategy, the good news is there’s only two buttons on the controller you need to worry about. One button is used to receive the ball or set it for your partner, the other is used for spikes and any other offensive hit. Don’t worry about which kind of shot you’ll get (a bump versus a set, etc.), it happens automatically most of the time. All you have to do is put your player somewhere near the ball and hit a button. Most of the time this will result in success on one level or another.

There are other shots available, like a jump serve or a light tap instead of a spike (like a drop shot in tennis). But the fact of that matter is that none of these things matter. A vicious-looking jump serve gets returned just as often as a normal serve. I had just as many aces with a normal overhand serve than I did with even my best-timed jump serves. Similarly, you can dictate to some extent the type of shot your partner hits. You can have them set the ball back to you for a spike or just let them decide what to do. The right thumbstick moves your partner around the court. So yes, there are controls beyond simply hitting the same button when the ball comes to you, but you don’t need them. Once you get the hang of guessing where your player is and hitting the ball at the right time, you can keep doing this over and over again until you win the point.

Even after experimenting with different pressure on the spike button or being more proactive with my partner, none of it makes any difference in the game. Sure, occasionally I’d spike the ball to a hole in the defense, but you can’t see that half of the court so it’s really just blind luck. And leaving my partner to her own devices worked far better than me telling her where to go. Once I got the hang of controlling my character, the game quickly degenerated into waiting for one of the computer-controlled characters to make a mistake. After a little practice, a very little, it became difficult to lose a match. And with no options for difficulty, the game doesn’t get any harder.

The graphics, while enticing for obvious reasons, aren’t as phenomenal as one would hope. Don’t misunderstand, someone at Tecmo and Team Ninja has obviously studied the female form extensively. The animations during play are fluid and realistic. The scenery is nice, and there are lots of courts to choose from.

But other areas seem neglected. Hair is one good example: It hardly moves. It’s most noticeable on the character with waist-length golden waves of blonde locks, Helena. It’s one big blob of gold flopping around like a mop soaked in Elmer’s glue. They also didn’t do anything to make the skin, and there’s lots of it, look at all realistic. There’s no texture to anyone’s complexion, making the fairer-skinned nymphs of the game look as if they’re made of ceramic. It also wouldn’t hurt to see the players’ heads follow the ball, but everyone just stares off into space until the ball comes to them. They even start stretching if the ball isn’t hit to them for a few seconds. The result is a player tucking her leg behind her back to stretch then suddenly diving for a ball she couldn’t have seen because she wasn’t looking at it. It looks like she wasn’t paying attention.

And if you’re paying any attention, after playing the game for only a few minutes you’ll have seen all the post-shot reactions the characters have to offer. They say almost the same thing every time, with the same animations. To make the whole thing get old even faster, none of the speech is translated. All this repetitive gibberish isn’t even in English.

Off the court, DOAXBV offers more of the same: eye candy with no depth or consequence. You can buy gifts (swimsuits, accessories, suntan lotion, etc.) for partners or potential partners, and each girl has certain likes and dislikes. You can also take your volleyball winnings to the casino, but there’s nothing there you can’t get in the bargain bin of your local game store. There is no extension of the personality of the game into the gambling section – it’s just a menu that offers blackjack, roulette, etc.

There’s a poolside game, as well, which challenges you to make your character jump from one flotation device to the next without falling into the pool. The other chance to see flotation devices in action is the swimsuit video section. This is an opportunity to watch your character roll around in the jungle. While you’re stuck with one poor camera position during volleyball, you can move the camera here to your heart’s content.

The multiplayer mode offers only the volleyball portion of the game and allows for a maximum of two players. That barely qualifies as “multi,” I’m afraid. You can choose your partners, your swimsuits and your court. Even playing against a real human, there’s not much more to the game than waiting for a computer controlled character to make a mistake. It speaks to Tecmo’s efforts with the volleyball part of their volleyball game that they didn’t even offer the option for four human players.

Once the shock value wears off (jeez, those are huge!), there’s not much else to see. It’s rated “M” for mature. But the game is so simplistic that a mature player would get bored easily. The only English speaking character is Zack, voiced by Dennis Rodman, who’s never been accused of acting mature. And the bewildering lack of gameplay options means this game can’t reasonably be aimed at adults. That means, you guessed it, the “M” is meant to warn buyers of the scantily clad characters, which I seriously doubt are enough to draw most grown-ups to spend $50.

It’s not a terrible game of volleyball, it’s just boring and easy. After the novelty of the scenery has passed, and I’m not just talking about the beach, the actual volleyball is shallow enough to play with one eye closed. Playing against a real person makes things slightly more interesting, but only by a slim margin. The graphics in a game this pedestrian would have to be superb to make it worth playing, but they’re far from superb. If not for the subject matter, no one would bat an eye at this piece of eye candy.