Doesn't Make Much of a Racquet
Sports games are a dime a dozen on video game consoles, and Tennis was one of the first activities to be developed within the gaming world. The gameplay of Tennis is fairly straightforward, which has led to new releases either expanding on the world of Tennis in new ways, or by games providing the most realistic experience yet. Family Tennis SP doesn't have much of a sense of direction however, and falls disappointingly in the middle of the court.
Family Tennis SP is about as simple as a Tennis game can get without being called ancient. You face an opponent, in a Tennis match, and one of you wins after a few serves. You can hit the ball in a few different ways which ultimately don't really help you much at all unless you're very experienced at the game, which isn't likely to happen to most players. This is just about all that Family Tennis SP has to offer in the form of Tennis matches.
Sadly, this Tennis game has a few faults to go with the simple gameplay, one of which is that the characters randomly fall over when they swing at the ball. This is not a good idea at all. You are randomly punished for simply playing the game. If your player falls, they usually don't get up until the other player could have scored- if the CPU weren't impossibly slow moving.
The CPU by themselves are a huge problem in Family Tennis SP, since they seem to often forget that they are actually playing a game of tennis and simply stand in place, gazing off into the distance. You can win almost any matchup by simply hitting the ball away from the CPU on any difficulty, as they take so long to register to even move for the ball that it is too late. This makes matches boring, repetitive and simply bad.
Family Tennis SP offers a main Tournament mode for you to play, in which you now get to play through multiple sluggish and easily won tennis games with no break. If you manage to win, nothing really happens besides you get a congratulations screen and you're dropped back to the menu. This odd presentation which plagues the whole game is a strange Japanese inspired minimalism. Japanese art styles are typically known for overly exciting and crazy visuals and gameplay, and in Family Tennis SP they simply clash with the basic gameplay on hand. It just doesn't make sense.
Family Tennis SP also has a few minigame collections to play through, none of which exactly break any new grounds or offer much excitement. Generally, Family Tennis SP doesn't do anything at all besides offer a bare bones tennis game. With a large number of other games in the same series which all offer different variations of the sport, it doesn't make sense to even have Family Tennis SP, a game with no real direction.
Family Tennis SP is best described as a game that half-tries to be too many things and ends up being what is essentially nothing. There isn't much to even really do in this basic tennis game other than rally until you trip and lose, or smash the ball away from opponents while they stand stiff on the court. There's no real life in Family Tennis SP, and you would be better off buying almost any other tennis simulator available at the moment.
3.5/10
Review copy provided by: Shin’en Multimedia
Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:48 pm by Knuckles