I think you can quickly get the jist of where I am going with the gameplay side of Tennis World Tour. But then perhaps it doesn’t help that it’s stupidly hard to put any timing into your shots due to ball lag and the fact that there are times when your player seemingly misses the shot, only for the ball to end up flying at lightspeed back across the net.Įven better than that is that occasionally, no matter how hard you try, your guy or girl will just completely ignore any shot near them, while at others will pull off the fancy dan moves and strike it from between their legs. Now, there has to be a bit of leniency for gamer error, as not everyone looking to pick up a controller for a bit of tennis will be the most fluent of gamers, but the line between ‘great shot’ and ‘bloody hell, where’s that off to?’ is so fine it is laughable. But should you dare to hold those buttons down for even a millisecond too long, your shot could easily end up on the completely opposite side to where you were aiming.
A simple tap of the relevant face button is usually enough to ensure that any ball coming your way is placed back into your opponent’s side of the court, but holding down these buttons, and sticking a bit of swazz on things via the left thumbstick will let you place shots a bit more effectively. I can’t fault the development team at Bigben Interactive for not actioning all the tennis basics, as they are all in place, allowing us to fire off aces, knock a passing shot down the line, hit things up for a lob and tease a little drop shot just over the net, but with a lack of any form of precision in place, what actually happens during play is very much hit or miss. And for all the dodgy visuals and lack of game modes in the world, if the gameplay found in a tennis title is rubbish, the game as a whole is going to be just that.
Three things that ensure that Tennis World Tour gets off to a seriously dodgy start.įrom leaving the menu and any fun that can be found in the seriously limited player creation opportunities, the gameplay isn’t up to scratch either.
There is also a serious lack of matchplay options, with the online options ‘coming soon’, whilst dipping into the exhibition mode puts you face-to-face with comically created tennis superstars (seriously, that Cristiano Ronaldo statue at Madeira airport has got nothing on these guys and girls). See, the developers have openly stated that Tennis World Tour isn’t finished (my words not theirs – they’ll talk about how the game will evolve from launch with exciting additions), but taking things on face value and from the main menu alone, a scrolling Tennis World Tour logo arrives in various colours to cover up the fact that the ‘news feed’ area is meant to be populated with ‘news’. Well, I’m here to tell you that Tennis World Tour shouldn’t have ever released on the day it did, and judging by the oddities and issues which are currently plaguing the latest tennis title, it quite probably should have been pushed back some more for good measure.Īnd that leaves me in a bit of a quandry. This is a game that was delayed, and then actually released on the original date, confusing the world and leaving us gamers wondering what all the fuss around the original delay was.
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