

Even though it's extremely traditional, it still works, and it was quite fun watching our tennis pro coming of age on the court.ĭespite the fact that we were never bored, the problem remains that it's so incredibly sparse in terms of content. The career mode is very basic, reminiscent of older sports games where you create your own athlete and go out as an amateur to slowly but surely get better as you fight your way to the top. Since online isn't available, we were forced to play the career mode, as playing exhibition matches isn't particularly meaningful in the long run.

Or as Ivan Lendl said in the early 1980s: "Grass is for cows". It also strikes us how well the surfaces are simulated and we really enjoyed playing on grass in particular, something that subtly tweaks the conditions to make things slightly more random.
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There's a satisfying weight to the game and an intuitive feel that clearly lets us deliver the balls we intend, and it doesn't take long for us to start getting better and get to grips with how to best use the analog sticks and challenge our opponent with some nasty returns. It's a very barebones tennis experience that has been served up, then, and we're almost suffering when we hit that first smash and it sinks in just how solid the foundations of Tennis World Tour actually are.

And then there are the doubles matches, which are also missing at launch but are set to be offered up at a later date. Just take one example such as the online multiplayer not being finished and included, in a sports game that is at its best against real people. There is so much here that could be good - really good even - however, the game is simply incomplete. all of these factors make it hard to understand exactly why the game has been launched in such an unfinished state. We've had previews and news drops, and the game has looked good, the level of ambition has seemed high and. Since it was revealed the studio has slowly but surely rolled out trailers. That's not so strange when you consider how the team that developed it, Breakpoint Studios, is largely made up of the people who developed Top Spin 4, which is considered by many to be a masterpiece in the genre. And then, of course, we have Tennis World Tour, which of the three is probably the one that has had the most hype. Therefore, after years of drought, three fairly big tennis games are coming to market within a few weeks of one another.įirst was AO International Tennis that offers a more realistic interpretation of the sport, and on the other end of the spectrum we've got Mario Tennis Aces, which has a slightly less authentic approach, albeit with a greater focus on family-friendly entertainment. Suddenly, however, it seems like several game developers collectively realised that there was a gap in the market and decided that they'd be the ones to overcome the problem. Neither EA (who made an early attempt) or 2K Sports have been interested in trying their luck with the sport either, and Top Spin and Virtua Tennis appear to have been dropped off the map completely. That's why it's been so strange that in recent years there has been something of a tennis drought no games with serious aspirations to dominate the sport have been released in a long time. It's a concept that works extremely well as a video game and, consequently, several of the world's best sports games are based on tennis. Even though it's technically based on table tennis, there's something brilliantly simple when two people face each other, pushing the paddles as quickly and accurately as possible so they can reach the ball and send it back in an attempt to beat their opponent. It's no coincidence that Pong came to be the first successful sports-based video game in the world.
