You'll have a few players to pick from at first, with lots waiting to be unlocked. You'll also have a few courts to choose from at the beginning, including locations in Brooklyn and Joliet (Who knew volleyball was so popular in the big house?). Make some decisions and jump right in. All games are 2 on 2, with options are available for rally or side out scoring, best of a series and difficulty.

If you've played Virtua Tennis, the mechanics of play will be somewhat familiar. Position your player where the ball will land, hold down a strike button until the power meter fills up, aim your shot at the same time, and whack away by letting go of the button. It sounds like a lot to be doing at once and at first, it is. But it's easy to pick up. The quicker you position your player in the spot where you expect the ball, the sooner you can decide what you want to do and the more time you'll have to aim and generate power – because you have to do all that before the ball gets there. If you don't leave yourself enough time for the power meter to go up at least a little, you'll be hitting a weak shot to a default spot on the court instead of a strong shot right where you want it. Positioning and timing are key, as they should be, because they are in real volleyball.

There's one button for bump, set and spike and your player will perform the obvious choice at the obvious time. You can also send some cheese over the net right away if you're not into the whole teamwork thing, and you can choose between a more aggressive shot or a dinky one depending on the button. Each shot also displays an "aimer" which shows you where on the court the ball is going. Until you get used to the movement of the ball, you might want to leave these on. They can be switched on and off for you and your opponents independently.

Another welcome option is camera angle. You can use a side view of the whole court, a baseline view (either up or down from the server) and a few others. No matter your preference, there's a view for you, and most give you a good look at the whole court. After all, you can't set up your spike to go to a deep corner if you can't see the corner. The other thing you can see are the other players responding to your shots and positioning. Those with higher skill ratings do a better job of getting in position once the ball leaves their side of the court. They also have varying degrees of adjustment when they realize they've left an area open. Basically, the A.I. habits of computer opponents seem very well in tune with skills of the players selected and the difficulty setting. The higher the difficulty, for example, the more often you'll see the computer attempt blocks, turbo hits and dinks.

Everything about the gameplay and options in Outlaw Volleyball invite the use of strategy and practice, and that's what a sports game should do.

The composure meter (now a momentum meter) and fighting elements from Outlaw Golf made it into Outlaw Volleyball as well (though fighting isn't available online). By spending a fighting token you start a brawl between you and one of your opponents (your choice) with your momentum meter on the line—winner take all. You can attack with punches and kicks and can also block attacks. As a distraction, it's plenty deep. If you start to screw up again, though, the meter drops pretty quickly and it's hard to get out of a hole. Lack of momentum doesn't make the game unplayable, but it does hinder your ability to get around the court, aim shots and bump hard spikes. A full momentum meter also allows you to use turbo power for speed, serves and spikes.

For those that aren't into jumping right into a game to figure out how it works, there are tutorials for the basics of the game, like volleying, serving, spiking, etc. They're narrated by game characters (much how fly-overs were narrated in Outlaw Golf) and are pretty funny – after all, they only have to be entertaining once unless, for some reason, you have to watch them over and over again.

Players have skill ratings for four categories: Speed, power, offense and defense. These can each be increased in the Drills section, which challenge you to practice your spking, bumping, and so on. For each succesful completion of a drill, you get a number of points to distribute among the skills as you see fit. Players and courts (there 16 of each) are unlocked in Tour mode, which, along with exhibition mode, is how you'll be spending most of your time offline.

The presentation in Outlaw Volleyball is top notch. Yes, the ladies are scantily clad, and that's great, but there's more to it than that. Even from high camera angles, the action on the court is clear and it's never a mystery as to what's going on. Each player model seems based on a different person with a different body—not just a different skin color, haircut or outfit. Textures add depth and realism to all the skin being flashed. But most importantly, animations transition extremely well during play. There's no choppiness between a standstill and a dive.

Steve Carrell of Bruce Almighty and The Daily Show fame does the announcing work with vigor. He's crass, obnoxious and doesn't repeat himself too often. There's a pretty big playlist to choose from when it comes to music, and custom soundtracks are supported if you prefer to bring your own.

The only downsides to Outlaw Volleyball come from its most anticipated feature: online play. If you've ever played a sports game or fighting game online, you know there are jerks out there who will quit a game they're about to lose. In this case, they can pause indefinitely until you give up and quit. There's simply no reason this option should be allowed. A competitive game shouldn't be so easily rendered meaningless by a poor sport.

It's also maddening that you can't play the single player game while logged on to Xbox Live. Isn't it obvious that players waiting for friends to log on would like to get some play time in? As it is, if you want to invite a player or wait for an invitation, that means you can either stare at your screen and wait or play someone else on Live. Once the invitation shows up, you can either leave the other player in a lurch by quitting or make your friend wait—presumably staring at his screen.

The good news for online play is that you can have more than one person in a game with only one Live account. So you and a friend can log on to one account and play together online.

The gameplay, graphics, flexibility of options and entertainment factor make this the best volleyball game to date, hands down. Outlaw Volleyball could have easily been an "A" game – a must-have for any sports fan. Instead, it's just very good, and it's a shame it was kept from greatness by a few obvious, easily avoided but crucial programming oversights. There's already a reasonable expectation they'll be fixed through download, but that's not good enough. If this is the beginning of a trend toward using Xbox Live to patch games, there are dark days ahead for Microsoft's mighty box.