Review

When Namco brought their Smash Court Tennis series to the PS2, they opted to follow a realistic route, leaving the cartoon approach behind. This also left a gap in the market that it has taken until now to be filled. Everybody’s Tennis approaches the world’s favourite racquet sport from a much more “fun” angle, attempting to do the same thing for lawn sports that they’ve successfully done for golf for many years.

Anyone familiar with Sony stable mate Everybody’s Golf with instantly recognise the crisp and colourful graphics, cute characters and cheery background muzak. It’s also incredibly simple to pick up and play. Beneath this cutesy presentation though lies a deceptively deep tennis game with superbly balanced characters, an enjoyable single player challenge and great offline multiplayer.

There are only three buttons required for playing shots: attack, defence and lob but the real skill comes from the timing and placement of them. A fairly lengthy and laborious tutorial is available from the menu that will teach you everything you need to know, but for me, the best way to learn is to just play, especially as a visiting alien with no prior knowledge of tennis or computer games could probably beat the first opponents you’ll encounter!

A small speech bubble over your character’s head indicates how good your timing is with musical notes used to show good shots and storm clouds and a skull for the poor. Get one of these and your shot could go anywhere. Particularly great winners are rewarded with an instant replay and a suitable level of adulation from the crowd.

Usually playing any sports game on your own is only good for short periods but not here. There is a well-designed solo campaign that throws up plenty of new characters, courts and bonuses to unlock but it’s the perfectly judged learning curve that makes it work. It isn’t long before you come up against some more challenging opponents and because each match is played out as a first to four replaying a match you’ve lost is never a chore.

The selection of matches is incredibly varied with loads of different courts to play on and the odd game of doubles thrown in where you and a CPU controlled character of your choosing take up the challenge. Enjoyable as it is, advancing through the ranks won’t take an experienced gamer too long and there’s no incentive to go back and play an opponent again once you’ve beaten them.

On the down-side the A.I. is occasionally prone to making stupid errors. Not so much a problem when it’s your opponent, but when it’s your doubles partner who misses a really easy shot it can be incredibly frustrating. Also the lack of any online features is disappointing but thankfully a PS2 multitap is supported for four players at once so it’s quickly forgotten about.

Ultimately, this is an enjoyable take on virtual Tennis, but I fear that the presentation will scare off most of its target audience. It’s also not quite as good as the Everybody’s Golf series but, like those games, should be enjoyed by sports and non-sports fans.

About the Review

Platform

Sony Playstation 2

Developer

Clap Hanz

Publisher

Sony Computer Entertainment

Released

13th April 2007