Developer
Acclaim Studios Cheltenham

Released: June 30, 2003
Genre: Sports
Players: 4
ESRB: Teen

8
7
6
8
7.1

Supported Features:

Back in the mid-80’s (before I discovered computers and long before video games) I actually had a life outside of my keyboard and monitor. I actually had a life “outside” as a DJ in south Florida by night and a semi-pro beach volleyball player by day. While I’ve never achieved the notoriety of my sandpit hero, Sinjin Smith, I did borrow his name to launch my online presence nearly ten years later.

My love for volleyball has never dwindled over the years, and I am still quick to join the local bar league or impromptu game at the various apartment complexes or frat houses over at Purdue. Today, these games are more about fun with large groups of 10-14 players (often drinking) split on either side of the net, but nothing can rival the intensity of those 2-on-2 matches on the white Florida sands.

As a sport, volleyball has been surprisingly absent from the video game industry. Until last year the only electronic volleyball game I had ever played was the one for the Turbo Grafx-16 back in the early 90’s and even that was a low-tech 2D game played from a ground-level side view. Things suddenly changed in 2002 when SEGA released Beach Spikers for the GameCube and gave us a fresh 3D look and incredible gameplay. The floodgates were now open and volleyball games spilled forth on all the consoles with all sorts of intriguing hooks.

Summer Heat Beach Volleyball is the third volleyball game to release for next-gen consoles and the only one currently available for the PS2. It builds on the premise of sexy women in revealing swimsuits already established in the earlier games then adds a substantially more complex and compelling gameplay element and intuitive graphical interface.

Summer Heat features:

• 2 on 2 Beach Volleyball action on 12 of the world’s hottest beach locations
• 14 Sexy male and female players to choose from
• Four gameplay modes, Training, Arcade, Exhibition, and Tournament, plus fun mini-games
• Unique presentation style with TV-style replays, court fly-throughs, player introduction and reaction videos and more
• More than 200 unlockable items, swimsuits, accessories, movies, courts.
• Innovative Beach House Mode allows you to virtually explore your unlocked bonuses between matches

Volleyball has three primary modes of attack; power, precision, and weak or feint attacks. These are assigned to three of the face buttons on the Dual Shock and work for serving, blocking and offensive plays. In additional to selecting the type of move you can adjust the power of each hit by the duration of the button press – the longer you hold down the button the harder you hit the ball. During the button press you also have the opportunity to aim your attack allowing you to work the other side of the net and hopefully score.

The graphical shot interface is quite inventive and one of the nicest I’ve seen in any of the available volleyball games. When you press down the action button of choice an arrow will appear indicating the path of the ball. The arrow will slowly change from yellow to orange to red to indicate the power of the hit. During this time you can also move this arrow and the target box, which is constantly shrinking to reflect the lower accuracy for the more powerful shots. This system models the complexity and contradicting premises of power vs. accuracy just like in the real game.

You begin the game by selecting a pair of characters and equipping them with any swimsuits or accessories that you have already unlocked. Characters all have various strengths and weakness in three categories, power, control, and speed, which I think speak for themselves as to their function. My only critique of this stat system is that your characters can never improve as they play through the tournament or complete the training. This ultimately results in some unbalanced matches where weaker teams are pummeled by the competition regardless of how well you, the player, have mastered the game.

The core of the game is the Summer Heat US Tour mode that consists of 20 tournaments, or about 80 games. This tour comes in four skill modes and is the only way you can really fine-tune the difficulty even though the game ramps up the challenge significantly about halfway through the Easy tour. Tournaments average 3-5 games each with a few scattered tournaments consisting of a single match only.

I was determined to complete at least the Easy tournament before writing this review, an undertaking of epic proportions, as I was about to find out. My female duo walked through the first eight tournaments without breaking a sweat. I was beginning to have serious doubts about the computer AI when all of the sudden things got ugly…very ugly.

For the final 12 tournaments the game became brutally hard almost to the point of becoming unfair (and keep in mind this is the easy mode). The opponent AI is nearly unstopped making superhuman plays (and saves) that border on “cheating”. They can anticipate and return 99% of anything you send over the net, even when you are going for corner and line shots. I quickly realized that the only thing that could beat the “computer” was another computer so I resigned myself to play the back of the court, digging up their spikes and sending them to my computer partner who was able to score about 10% of the time or about 10x more often that I could.

Near the end of the game, around tournament 18, the AI just got absurd to the point where I got the stopwatch out and times some of my volleys which soared into the 10-12 minute range. I actually had one exchange last 12m:24s before Roxy was able to smash the ball over the net and finally score on our opponents. As anyone who has played or watched real beach volleyball will attest, volleys seldom last more than 15-20 seconds, and players would be hitting the sand with heat stroke if volleys lasted as long as some of mine.

To make matters even worse (read frustrating) most tournaments are Knockouts so if you lose even one game in the set you are “knocked out” and have to replay them all. Imagine struggling and winning the first four of five games only to lose the final game in the series and have to replay the entire thing. There is no double-elimination or losers’ bracket in these tournament trees - just despair and frustration.

To it’s credit, Summer Heat does allow a second player to join in to cooperatively tackle the tournaments, but since the AI is so aggressive that only the computer can effectively score, replacing your AI partner with a living, breathing friend may trigger your ultimate doom.

There is a nice 4-player component included for those who have a Multitap and when you remove the insanely difficult computer AI the game becomes exponentially more fun. Even if you are playing the 2-player game with computer partners, it’s still more fun than one human stuck in the group of three AI players. But again, the gameplay is highly reliant on the hard coded attributes of your chosen players and doesn’t always reflect the skills of the human working the gamepad. In fact, you could find your skills limited by a player with low stats.

The character models are quite simple, constructed with moderate polys and basic textures. This keeps the framerate constant and fluid, but for a game that focuses heavily on scantily clad players, something seems to be missing. Even in the close-ups and player reaction videos the characters look very PS1 or Dreamcast.

There are some nice subtle touches like long hair tossing around and if you use the excellent replay tools you can zoom and pan around and go frame-by-frame to enjoy the close-ups of the girls’ unnatural jiggling that defies logic and gravity. You’ll probably be able to spot a few clipping problems where arms pass through heads, etc.

The interface is flawless and the multi-color arrow and target box makes this one of the most accessible volleyball games for players of all ages and skill levels. The courts themselves range from sparsely populated beach environments to large stadium seat arenas with cheering crowds. Most games are played with only a few casual observers and only near the end of the tour do you attract the larger crowds. I was amused to see that rather than licensing sponsors for authentic banners the stadiums were instead decorated with banners for other Acclaim titles like VEXX and Turok.

The free floating camera does a great job of capturing the action while always giving you plenty of time and just the right view to play a good defensive and offensive game. Unlike DOAXBV where I was often playing a character that wasn’t even on the screen, Summer Heat never screwed me with the camera and the replay system is second to none.

With the music off I was able to get a clearer picture of the other sounds in the game, which are few but adequate. There is no in-game commentary other than a verbal declaration of the score and the announcing of player names prior to the game. There is a token amount of player chatter including opening taunts and challenges during introductions and the occasional shouts, grunts, and groans during the game. You’ll get cues to set, spike, etc. based on your actions and those of your partner. In the final tournaments you will get a good cheering crowd that reacts to the gameplay.

Clothing items can be swapped out during the character select portion of the game but for some annoying reason you cannot change clothes in mid-tournament. You’d better pick a character and an outfit that you can stand to look at for 80+ games and the 20-30 it will take to play them. Other items like music videos and game demos can be accessed in the innovative beach house. This virtual environment allows you to wander through a luxury beachfront condo watching music videos on the TV, viewing game demos on the computer in the kitchen, or playing the in-game music tracks on the boom box out by the pool.

As with any sports title the length of play is measured only by your interest or enthusiasm. Completionists will want to unlock every last item and video and that might take you 50-100 hours. Due to the repetitive nature of the gameplay, Summer Heat is best taken in small doses. I did the first 8 tournaments in one sitting then I struggled through 2-3 more each night for the next week. By the end of my easy tournament I was really burned out and ready to shelf the game.

There are also three mini-games to keep you entertained. Beach Bowls, Ice Court, and Nerd Smash offer amusing diversions but you’ll have to unlock all but the first. The two and four-player game modes will also extend the life of this title and perhaps justify the purchase of that Multitap. Considering Summer Heat is only $29 you get quite a bit of quality gaming for your dollar.

In the end, there is plenty to see, plenty to do, and plenty to unlock in Summer Heat Beach Volleyball. It might not be the best total volleyball package available, but it is the best “playing” volleyball game and your only option if a PS2 is your gaming system of choice. Check it out and prepare for some serious fun in the sun.