If the Better Business Bureau were ever to do a seminar on how to identify false advertising, Ultimate Beach Soccer should be their centerpiece. With the word "beach" in the title and a cover adorned by two bikini-clad women you would think Ultimate Beach Soccer was just another title trying to capitalize on the popularity of other hormone-enraging titles such as DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball or Outlaw Volleyball.
Unfortunately, like those games the gameplay absolutely sucks in UBV, but there isn’t a single digital gal to give at least the guys some relief. What we’re left with instead is a poorly designed soccer game that is sure to entertain nobody. The actual soccer gameplay is just atrocious; capturing none of the enthusiasm there is in playing the actual sport. The only thing that could possibly be any more sluggish than UBV’s gameplay is if Jabba The Hut tried to fit into a Volkswagen bug.
The game doesn’t offer a single worthy mode to compensate for the lack of gameplay. What you have instead is the traditional Sports game fair that EA has been offering us for years. There’s your traditional quick start mode in the form of "Friendly" mode, an Arcade and Beach Soccer tour (which are just slight reworkings of each other), your standard Training mode, and a Custom Competitions mode that allows you to play with up to three other friends. Of course, the only people that would likely appreciate your willing to share a game of UBV would be your sleep-deprived friends.
To add insult to injury, neither the game’s music nor graphics are decent. Character models feature little detail, and don’t animate well. The game only offers you four different environments, each one being a little duller than the last. The game’s audio is also rotten egg stinky, with atmospheric sounds that do little to convince you that you’re really on a beach, and music used so sparingly that you hardly even notice it.
In the end, Ultimate Beach Volleyball amounts to nothing. This title is nothing more than rubbish pumped out by publishers in an effort to capitalize on current trends, proving nothing more than that gaming has become a business, and corporate bigwigs still have no clue as to what constitutes a good and entertaining game.