Womens Championship Volleyball

Rating Everyone Genre sports Publisher AgeTec

Speaking solely as a consumer who does not play sports games, I admit to the difficulty of seeing a market for games that emulate certain sports. I can understand some of the major sports, and by no means do I consider women's volleyball to be an inferior, arbitrary, or even remote sporting event. What I do question is the creation of a budget title using a specific a sport. On top of that, please note that this game is created for a system that is approaching the end of its life cycle.

Womens Championship Volleyball suffers from form not following function. A technically simple, yet effective game finds itself trapped with unnecessary fluff and lack of variety. In an effort to get the bad news resolved, do not play this game with the commentary on. It is systemic, repetitive, and overbearing. The choice of teams seem like an oversight. Given the amount of countries, I do not understand why these countries were chosen nor am I convinced that their stats are carefully planned. Outside of these particulars, the rest of the focus is on gameplay.

At least ninety percent of the actual gameplay involving volleyball involves a great sense of timing. Everything dealing with serving, returning, attacking and defending can be linked to the push of mapped buttons and a sense of timing. Hitting a button too late or too early before the ball comes close to a player will results in possibly disastrous results. Gameplay modes can be adjusted for difficulty, scoring, computer control options, play style, and even training options.

The single, most attractive feature in this title is the team creation system. When you play in exhibition games, leagues and tournaments, you earn player points. Those points can be used to buy training cards. Each of those cards can be selected while attending player creation sessions. Each player goes through several stages, where cards are selected from a maintained pool. Selected cards will adjust stats for each player up or down based on card features and the others selected. Push players too hard without resting and an injury may occur, thus costing valuable training time. The earned training cards may be used to further develop you players ability. Once a full team is created, feel free to select it and proceed.

I would love to see this creation system implemented in other games, be they sports or otherwise. The system itself seems to lend well to games of a more fantasy base. I was reminded of several monster fighters while attempting to hone the skills of a women's volleyball team. Gameplay itself is erratic, but not without its working components. In truth, it is unclear why this game was released in the state it was. I fail to see any pressures on the company that would not have been self-imposed. Of course, this is mere speculation.