A tennis game with special moves?

That's what I thought the first time I heard about this new game coming from Ubi Soft. "Your racquet is your only weapon" is the motto here, and it seems to me that the development team really wanted to make a fighter, but got stuck with a tennis game. So, they merged the two into this strange mix called Tennis Arena.

You'd think all that gold would really hurt your return ability.

To sim... or not to sim...?

Tennis Arena has the makings of one of the most fun and realistic tennis sims ever on the Playstation, with good graphics, sound and control. But, instead of going along that rout and appeasing the die-hard tennis fans out there, the developers threw in all sorts of questionable things to make it more "fresh," to say the least.

First is the selection of players. There are ten to choose from, half male and half female. Each sex has a "generic" tennis player who traditionalists can play as. Then there are the rest, who range from a sumo-looking guy wearing gold chains, to an eighties looking girl in fishnets, to a guy who plays in baggy blue-jeans.

If that wasn't odd enough, now comes the special moves. After a number of successful volleys, an orange star will appear beneath you player's feet. This means that your player can then execute a weak version of their special move. But, if you wait for little longer, eventually the star will turn red, and then begin to flash. At this point, your player can pull off a full power special move. The move is different for each character, but it all results in the same thing: a smashed ball down the line that magically drops in the corner, usually out of reach for your opponent. This shot doesn't always result in winning the point (sometimes your opponent is lucky enough to be standing in the right place at the right time), but is usually impressive sight nonetheless.

Venues for playing are usually quite... interesting as well. There's a court placed in the middle of a decaying Roman coliseum, one on the deck of a swaying cruise ship, another in a New York city park, and another in the midst of many large crystal pyramids. Interesting locales for playing tennis, to say the least, but the pretty backgrounds rarely come into play. What does matter is that each location has a different court compound (clay, grass, etc) which affects the bounce of the ball and the speed of play to some degree.

Players have quite good detail.

The good and the bad

Graphics here are quite good on one level, but rather shoddy on another.

Starting with the good, players are well constructed and textured. Details like facial features, clothing, sneakers and the logos on racquets are clearly noticeable. They're also very well animated and move quite realistically, looking like they've been motion captured from the real thing, and are much better for it. Each player also has some characteristic animations, which range from throwing the racquet on the ground in anger, to spinning it on their finger, wiping the sweat off their brow, etc. These give the players even more character and personality, something they're certainly not lacking to begin with.

And now to the bad. Levels are good looking and well designed, but totally static. The only things that move are the players, the ball, and the little ball-girl who zips about the court. The crowd, line-judges, referee and everything else just sit there. Smash a forehand down the line and it will more often than not bounce off the line-judge's 2-D sprite head before coming to a rest. It would have been nice to see a moving crowd, a referee who moves once in awhile, and line-judges who get out of the way of a 120mph shot.

Sound in the game suffers from the same duality. Sound effects are quite good; racquets hitting balls, balls hitting nets, and players grunting as they hit shots are all faithfully reproduced here. Between each point the referee calls the score, and tells who is to serve in each game. So far so good, but the sound lacks in a few crucial areas. Mainly, the crowd is completely silent! The noise from the crowd is often an integral part of tennis, rallying a player or booing a poor performance. They're simply quiet here. This can make the course of a match rather tedious at times, because there isn't any background music either.

There is music during the menu screens, which is fairly good, but none during the course of a match.

Control takes a bit of getting used to, but is comprehensive once it is mastered. There are four shots (not counting the special move): a standard ground stroke, top spin, bottom spin, and a lob. You'll typically find yourself hitting ground strokes the majority of the time, with the occasional top or bottom spin to confuse your opponent, and a lob once in awhile for those opponents who like to hug the net. Direction and power of the shot is controlled by pressing the D-pad in the desired direction while the ball is being struck, with the ball moving to a greater or lesser degree depending upon the type of shot being hit and the length that the D-pad is pressed in that particular direction. The flight of the ball can also be curved with the L1 and R1 buttons.

The player will automatically choose forehand or backhand or a variety of other shots (including overhead smashes for those annoying lobs) depending upon the position of the ball when you hit the shot button.

Not too bad.

The idea of turning tennis into a hip and funky game is just a little odd, and doesn't quite come off right. It's an okay game, but could have been much better with licensed players, real locations and real conditions.

As it is, this game isn't sure to please everybody, but if you're interested in tennis you might just want to check it out.