Today, we're reviewing Mario Tennis Aces. Mario Tennis is inevitable on any Nintendo platform.
So the real question is does this entry serve up a fresh new take on the series or does it strike out that's a tennis term right?
This was the last mario tennis game, I played. It was also the first mario tennis game I played.
The first mario tennis game period mario tennis was the only game I had on my Virtual Boy. I spent many an hour on the court as Donkey Kong wearing a diaper my back hunched.
My eyes sweaty. So I don't really know where the series has been since then. I'm pretty much a newcomer. I was especially excited to get my hands on it after the tournament demo first.
Because I'm awful at naturally including it in the body of her view. Let's get presentation out of the way. This game looks really good. I wouldn't say that it's quite on par with some of Mario's other outings. But resolution is high character models are pleasant.
Animated decently well and it all runs smoothly. The different environments are very pleasing especially compared to what I've seen of past games. The core experience is nearly identical on most courts yet. Even just the aesthetic differences really make the whole thing much more pleasant.
The music on the other hand is pretty darn disappointing. It makes sense for like the main theme to use that den and then it kind of sports show music. But the whole game uses it even the adventure mode grass place, ice place, lava place.
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Doesn't matter done and then like there's none of that spunky. Well composed Mario music That I've come to love. It's all just a boring mash of the same old kinds of tunes.
This isn't some boring Sports show, It's Mario Tennis. There's so much more that could have done with it onto the really important stuff though.
Let's talk about that gameplay. It was clear from the first moments that this game is darn fun. The most immediately satisfying thing for me was how easy it to hit the ball. If you hit the button early, you'll start to charge up energy.
You'll swing automatically when the ball gets to you not
only is charging up for more powerful shots very satisfying.
But the movement slow down while charging frees up the control stick for better aiming your shots. There are different kinds of shots you can do as well.
Depending on what button you hit though. The game doesn't do a great job of explaining the various uses outside of the adventure mode.
It took me quite a while to start using different ones.
Beyond those basics you build up energy as you play which allows you to pull off all sorts of neat tricks zone, Speed slows down time.
So you can return shots that are too far to reach normally hitting are when standing on a star. Lets you do a zone shot where time freezes.
You get to manually aim an extra powerful shot then. If your energy gauge is full, you can do a special shot which is like a zone shot. But you can activate it whenever you want your opponent can block these shots. But if their timing isn't perfect, they'll damage the racket.
If any player runs out of racquets, they lose the whole
match. You've got trick shots where you can flick the right stick to leap to
the other side of the court for some last-second saves.
But bad timing, causes you to lose energy normal tennis is already a mind game.
All this other stuff injects a huge amount of extra strategy into the experience.
It's about constant risk and reward. Do you want to save your energy for a special shot or do you want to spend it on zone shots? or should you hold on to a little to protect yourself against their next zone shot with some zone speed.
Should you risk breaking your racket to block their special shot? Should you forget about points and just try to aim at them and break their racket?
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You're constantly watching both energy gauges and making decisions on the fly all the while trying to judge what they're gonna do? and where the balls are gonna go, Where you should be.
It's really intense and always loads of fun once you step away from just the gameplay and start looking at the actual content of the game. However things start to fall apart the adventure mode was a really big selling point seeing as.
It's something that fans have been asking for since Mario Tennis graced the GBA. Nintendo hyped it up ridiculously first. Let's go over what I liked about it well. Most of all I'm just happy that it exists, I'm glad Camelot decided to give it another go.
I don't want to just play the same old tennis matches forever in any game like this. I'm always happy to have some sort of challenge mode to change up the gameplay.
Adventure mode here offers something of a story varied environments and interesting little challenges that are more than just playing tennis. While it's a little disappointing that every boss follows the same basic formula. They're all undeniably fun.
You can use trick shots to dodge their attacks. I think
that's an extremely clever way of incorporating some more traditional Mario
platforming elements into a game about tennis.
Adding an extra layer of fun and challenge then each of the adventure mode levels are timed.
I normally don't like time Mario Tennis Aces challenges. But here it makes a lot of sense, instead of having health.
You lose time when you take damage or miss shots again, making it a little more like a traditional experience time is, Basically your health.
Unfortunately the genuine joys of adventure mode are few. If I can boil it all down to one thing. It's that it feels like Nintendo went to Camelot told them to make an adventure mode in the next Mario Tennis game and gave them about eight months to do it.
It's like the start of an idea, you know that cutscene that Nintendo used to jazz everyone up, holy cow and this game Luigi gets taken over by an evil spirit and turns Wario and Waluigi into his minions. This is some Super Paper Mario levels of cool here.
We're in for a wild ride well what if I told you that this under 30 second cutscene right here and a 12 second cutscene at the end where all you get the rest is just talking heads.
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I'm perfectly fine with Cheaper talking heads doing the bulk of the storytelling and holding up a few expensive CG cutscenes.
You got a cut cost somewhere, I guess. But they're so little to actually watch hear that I wonder why they even bothered with the CG stuff. If anything the short intro just gets your hopes up.
You go through the entire story waiting for more and more
just never happens, then the story is just nothing.
I mean it doesn't live up to its potential to even the tiniest degree.
I won't spoil the ending. But I'll say that none of it is satisfying.
The whole thing with Luigi in the racket and all amounts to nothing.
I wasn't expecting Shakespeare here and I wasn't even expecting something as deep as the GBA story mode by at least expected a little more than.
This it's like, if you're gonna have a story have a story the bare-bones plot would absolutely be easier to forgive. If the campaign had a little meat to it. But this mode is short beat it in an afternoon short you're walking around.
This massive map passing over nodes that just don't have levels on them. It's like what happened there. Each of the five environments contain a teeny tiny handful of challenges and this would be easier to forgive.
If what we got was really good, if there was a great amount of variety in the levels we did have. But it reuses the same handful of concepts again and again sometimes with only the slightest changes. There are these tiny little glimmers of inspired design that shine through.
But look done with that moving right along. Let's knock down the same exact panels again. But with a little less time on the clock adventure mode, features some RPG elements as well.
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Mario Tennis Aces another sounded like a dream come true situation playing levels. Earns you experience and when you level up you increase your various stats. You can also earn additional rackets with different stats, sounds like a heck of a good deal to me.
Problem is none of these changes have a visible effect on the gameplay. I could never really see that I was getting stronger and the differences in rackets are negligible. I just plowed through the mode without a problem and without ever giving a second.
Thought to how my stats were increasing or how I could be using different rackets in different levels. There's another problem right there. There are a few good challenges.
But as a whole, it's way too easy and there's no difficulty setting. Once you're done there's nothing else to beat.
There's no other incentive to get back in there and get stronger and keep enjoying it. You can't use other characters nothing. Once the credits roll that's it that was it good afternoon. I guess what's next.
Once more I say that even an entire disappointing adventure
mode would have been easier to forgive.
If the game otherwise provided a good amount of content.
It doesn't there are three CPU tournaments and I beat each one on my first try and all in one sitting.
I was baffled that this didn't unlock another more challenging tournament. Why isn't there at least one tournament for each CPU difficulty and as it is with adventure mode.
There are no rewards, no scores to chase nothing to unlock. Nothing to keep you coming back then. oOf course is the star of the show the online tournament and hey this is pretty good performance has been good so far only.
A little bit of lag nothing that breaks the game fortunately, it hasn't been a problem every time. I've joined a tournament. But Bowser jr. does pose a serious problem. He's preposterous lay overpowered and if they don't nerf him, it's gonna hurt the game.
So at least for now, even the main attraction has a big issue holding it back. Finally there's free play and of course this is how you either go up against your friends or CPU opponents. For a game that's so focused on multiplayer, there is a serious lack of options here.
You can't set how long you want a match to be and you can't even choose what court you want to play. Instead having to manage a list that it randomly pulls from I know. I spent a lot of time on the adventure mode and I only just started on the other modes.
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But already I'm struggling to come up with more to say about this game. I usually like to really dig into each mode and mechanic in a game. But there's really nothing left to cover. There's just so little to this game and after playing it for a solid day.
I was done, I felt like I'd done everything I kept picking it, back up wanting to do more and realizing that there was nothing left to do. I'll dip into an online tournament every once in a while. I might play with some friends on occasion. But as far as solo play goes, Mario Tennis aces has a dearth of content.
This is my first review to use the word dearth, just compare it to something like Mario Kart 8 a massive variety of tracks, tons of vehicle customization for different driving styles, a long gauntlet of cups with several difficulty settings parts to unlock trophies to win ghosts to race.
The biggest selling point is the multiplayer. But there's still plenty of content to keep one person busy then the multiplayer options are more limited than I would like. You can hear more about it in my review. But there are still different modes to play and all sorts of options for setting up your own online tournament that.
You can invite anyone and everyone. It's not a perfect game. But at least it feels like a full experience it lives up to that Nintendo standard of quality, it feels like they put a lot of time into it and tried really hard to make it a big game.
That would really last the Wii U version, was lighter on
content sure.
But at least it still had customization and all those cups to run through and trophies to win and a more robust online experience Mario Tennis Aces.
However just doesn't try, its happy doing the bare minimum Adventure mode was. Its chance to do more than the bare minimum.
But they did the bare minimum with that - and I know a lot of people are gonna tell me that the game doesn't need a lot of content.
Because the multiplayer is the whole point and on that front it mostly delivers. It's true that multiplayer is great and that the core gameplay is really refined and fun. I don't think that's a good excuse to just not try very hard the gameplay is good.
But it's also really simple with no customization or progression. You can't take any old game and say that it's automatically worth $60 just because it's intended to be played online. Especially considering soon we'll have to pay extra for that privilege, if you're a mario tennis freak.
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You're happy playing endless matches with little to no variation and no goals and rewards. You can't go wrong here. More power to you when you're in it playing tennis. It's fun as heck get some friends together and you'll have a great time.
But I'm getting deja vu. I was not impressed with what the game had to offer the switch started. Its life by giving me full console experiences in handheld form.
But now it's starting to feel a little like it wants to give me lighter handheld experiences at full console prices Mario Tennis Aces is a fun experience that's a little too simple to keep my attention for long. So I placed it on the middle of the scale for atom 7.
Buy Mario Tennis Aces Here : https://amzn.to/3eC1AEJ
