Double Fault
Hot Shots Tennis is simple and vapid, and that's a bad combo.
Published: July 20, 2007
Sony's Clap Hanz development studio has made a name for themselves with the Hot Shots Golf franchise. Blending a simple approach to the links that's instantly accessible but packs an impressive amount of unlockable goodies, it is in many ways as good as golf gets -- on any system. So when I first got the chance to play with a localized version of Hot Shots Tennis, I expected the same accessible treatment to the game of tennis. The only problem is, tennis doesn't really need to be dumbed down any.
In fact, tennis is almost the antithesis of golf; plenty of great games, most notably the Virtua Tennis series has managed to skirt the line between arcade and sim absolutely brilliantly, and on top of all that they provide a ton of addictive mini-games. Even when the game stumbles, as it did with the third outing on the PS3, and didn't bother to go online, it's still among the best pick-up-and-play tennis games out there. With competition like that, Hot Shots Tennis had to do something to stand out.
And it did. It does precisely one thing that's at least superficially different in that the timing of your hits, be they volleys, slices, lobs, smashes or what have you, all comes down to when you press the button. Do it too early and your accuracy goes out the window and the ball gets too much muscle. Do it too late and there's a good chance the ball won't even make it over the net. Everything else about the game, however, relies on the cutesy characters to pull it through, and while they are cute (Sony finally ditched the idea of changing all their characters over from anime-inspired competitors to some kind of weird cartoony bastardization), cute just isn't going to cut it.
For starters, there are no mini-games. In fact, unless you try to count the tutorial or local multi-player modes as separate entries, there's really only one mode in the game, Challenge Mode, which has you ascending the various tiers in the game to knock off players and add them to your stable of playable characters. You can get new players by besting them just as in Hot Shots Golf, and like HSG the later players have far better stats, so it's smart to just keep changing players all the way up since the game doesn't even bother to offer an upgrades system like any other tennis game.
Not only does this expose one of the game's glaring weaknesses -- it's way too friggin' easy to just mash the topspin button and with proper timing paint the edges of the court with your returns -- but it also serves to further highlight that the game is rather vapid when you look at the total package. Granted, it's only a $30 game, but that's at least $10 too much and to be honest feels like something that could have been turned into a simple $10 downloadable PS2 game for the PS3 (not that they're doing that yet, but it's that basic).
About the only place the game really shines is where Clap Hanz games have always shone: the visuals. The various courts that range from beaches to ancient ruins to wooded glens to urban parks all look great. Given how long the project has been in casual development, the overall art direction and execution is nothing short of top notch; it may not be the best playing tennis game on the PS2, but it certainly looks best by far. Most of that is due to the super-deformed anime characters' silky animation and the general over-the-top, cartoony style of the hits. Characters sprint across the court in bounding little gaits and return smash hits with the kind of gusto you'd never see on an actual tennis court. It's just a shame the game wasn't online or something...
The audio is the same -- plucky and cute and at once familiar and slightly different from what's in the Hot Shots Golf games. The sound of the characters usually drown out the normally tranquil matches, so but it complements to the style of the game to have girlish yelps and cartoony grunts accompanying the hits rather than the sound of felt hitting catgut. Honestly, it's nothing you haven't heard in a Clap Hanz game, but in a way that's a little reassuring.
So the presentation is top notch and the tennis that's actually in the game isn't half bad. That only gets you to a halfway-decent game. The rest is taken over by how those elements are used in a way that makes you feel like you're getting your money's worth. With no online play, no career mode or extra stuff to unlock to customize the characters already in the game (not beyond swapping outfits and ladies, ho hoooo), there's just nothing here to really entertain unless you have a bunch of friends and a ton of booze, and even then, there are better tennis games to play on the PS2, and even better tennis games on other systems.
Hot Shots Tennis is solid, but there's just nothing to it. If there had been a compelling use of the core gameplay, I might have been able to see this as anything more than a purely average tennis game, and it's getting a score to match.
In fact, tennis is almost the antithesis of golf; plenty of great games, most notably the Virtua Tennis series has managed to skirt the line between arcade and sim absolutely brilliantly, and on top of all that they provide a ton of addictive mini-games. Even when the game stumbles, as it did with the third outing on the PS3, and didn't bother to go online, it's still among the best pick-up-and-play tennis games out there. With competition like that, Hot Shots Tennis had to do something to stand out.
And it did. It does precisely one thing that's at least superficially different in that the timing of your hits, be they volleys, slices, lobs, smashes or what have you, all comes down to when you press the button. Do it too early and your accuracy goes out the window and the ball gets too much muscle. Do it too late and there's a good chance the ball won't even make it over the net. Everything else about the game, however, relies on the cutesy characters to pull it through, and while they are cute (Sony finally ditched the idea of changing all their characters over from anime-inspired competitors to some kind of weird cartoony bastardization), cute just isn't going to cut it.
For starters, there are no mini-games. In fact, unless you try to count the tutorial or local multi-player modes as separate entries, there's really only one mode in the game, Challenge Mode, which has you ascending the various tiers in the game to knock off players and add them to your stable of playable characters. You can get new players by besting them just as in Hot Shots Golf, and like HSG the later players have far better stats, so it's smart to just keep changing players all the way up since the game doesn't even bother to offer an upgrades system like any other tennis game.
Not only does this expose one of the game's glaring weaknesses -- it's way too friggin' easy to just mash the topspin button and with proper timing paint the edges of the court with your returns -- but it also serves to further highlight that the game is rather vapid when you look at the total package. Granted, it's only a $30 game, but that's at least $10 too much and to be honest feels like something that could have been turned into a simple $10 downloadable PS2 game for the PS3 (not that they're doing that yet, but it's that basic).
About the only place the game really shines is where Clap Hanz games have always shone: the visuals. The various courts that range from beaches to ancient ruins to wooded glens to urban parks all look great. Given how long the project has been in casual development, the overall art direction and execution is nothing short of top notch; it may not be the best playing tennis game on the PS2, but it certainly looks best by far. Most of that is due to the super-deformed anime characters' silky animation and the general over-the-top, cartoony style of the hits. Characters sprint across the court in bounding little gaits and return smash hits with the kind of gusto you'd never see on an actual tennis court. It's just a shame the game wasn't online or something...
The audio is the same -- plucky and cute and at once familiar and slightly different from what's in the Hot Shots Golf games. The sound of the characters usually drown out the normally tranquil matches, so but it complements to the style of the game to have girlish yelps and cartoony grunts accompanying the hits rather than the sound of felt hitting catgut. Honestly, it's nothing you haven't heard in a Clap Hanz game, but in a way that's a little reassuring.
So the presentation is top notch and the tennis that's actually in the game isn't half bad. That only gets you to a halfway-decent game. The rest is taken over by how those elements are used in a way that makes you feel like you're getting your money's worth. With no online play, no career mode or extra stuff to unlock to customize the characters already in the game (not beyond swapping outfits and ladies, ho hoooo), there's just nothing here to really entertain unless you have a bunch of friends and a ton of booze, and even then, there are better tennis games to play on the PS2, and even better tennis games on other systems.
Hot Shots Tennis is solid, but there's just nothing to it. If there had been a compelling use of the core gameplay, I might have been able to see this as anything more than a purely average tennis game, and it's getting a score to match.