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Outlaw Volleyball Remixed for the PlayStation 2 is a port of the, now pretty old, Xbox game of a similar name. Outlaw Volleyball arrived on the Xbox in 2003 and was an entertaining, if somewhat crude arcade sports game. Since then, a few other games have graced the Outlaw series and things are starting to become a little dull. The fact that this port adds little new to the original game doesn’t help matters.
If you’ve played the original or the recently released Outlaw Tennis, you’ll know what to expect from Outlaw Volleyball Remixed. It’s a volleyball game, but you can use turbo speed, perform super shots, get into fights, listen to some crude humour and watch some scantily clad volleyball babes make their mothers proud.
Actual gameplay is pretty decent, if a bit too simple, with most shots being recoverable. You can choose to let the computer AI control your playing partner or switch between them yourself. With the awkward camera angles on offer, it’s often best to stick to one player, but it’s up to you. It’s only when you introduce the super moves that things start to get a little ugly. For a start, they seem to be far less effective than the on-screen representation suggests they should be, with the opponent returning the ball almost as regularly as a normal shot. The turbo also makes the players awkward to control, so you’ll stick to standard ‘realistic’ controls for the most part.
As with Outlaw Tennis, you start the game with four characters available to choose from. Their stats are pretty low, but playing through the drill mode will let you increase their abilities. Alternatively you can unlock new players in the tour mode, with the later players having far more impressive stats. The drill mode is a tutorial of sorts, testing your serving, spiking, bumping, and blocking skills with a series of little mini-games. There is a more formal tutorial, but this is in demonstration form only, giving you no form of interaction.
Being ‘Outlaw Volleyball Remixed’ you might be expecting plenty of extras not seen in the original game. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. While I can’t claim to have unlocked everything in the Xbox original, all that seems to be new here is two additional courts and a number of extra costumes. When this is combined with some poor visuals (the Xbox version looked quite sharp) and the same irritating audio, the Remixed name stinks of a rehash.
The online play from the Xbox game has made its way to the PlayStation 2, but this is limited by the fact that only two players can play together (four would have been nice) and that finding anyone to play against is a challenge in itself. As is usually the case with average games that include online play, it barely seems worth the effort.
You could fool yourself into thinking it’s a new game due to the visuals that have none of the sheen of the Xbox original and the new ‘find an online opponent’ mini-game, but you’d be better off flicking through Sky Sports for some real life action.
