Outlaw Tennis
Fought the law, and the law won
Tags: Outlaw Tennis Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Sep 8th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Outlaw Tennis (title page) | 1 - 4 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Sports (Exteme) | Yes | ||
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Okay, I know what they’re doing is supposed to be funny. I can feel them reaching for the laughs. Everything from the cheesy announcer to the stereotype-filling characters to the moronic one-liners just screams “No, I’m funny! Really! Laugh, dammit!”, but much like a geeky kid that follows you around telling knock-knock jokes in hopes that one will work, Outlaw Tennis isn’t funny. In fact, it’s a bit tragic.
Look! That girl is a big-boobed blond slut! Sluts are funny, right? And that guy is all narcissistic and he has a huge groin! Ain’t that a gas? And how about that girl who’s an American Indian, huh? Isn’t it great that she swears in random Indian jargon like “Scalped!”? Heck, some don’t even make sense! Look, now she’s swearing the name “General Custer”! Get it? Because of… the… uhh… Little Bighorn… hmm… yeah…
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Well, there’s also the announcer, who makes fun of the Mexican-themed tennis court by telling you the water gives you explosive diarrhea! Haw haw haw! And he references body parts being frozen off in the snow-themed court! And… and…
Yup. Not funny. And not sexy either for that matter, which it seems to strive for with its well-endowed females in skimpy outfits. Unfortunately, the characters act so cartoonishly stupid, and have character models featuring a level of detail far less than impressive, there’s nothing here that even comes close to competing with the likes of DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball (the title the series was seemingly created to compete with).
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In fact, as far as graphics go, absolutely nothing here is impressive, save for a decent amount of variety in character win/lose animations, but that only goes so far. The courts aren’t as realistic as Virtua Tennis or Top Spin’s, nor are they as colorful and lively as Mario Tennis’. Graphically, they’re more on par with the likes of the Tony Hawk games (hint: graphics were never one of Tony Hawk’s strong points).
So that leaves us with the gameplay, which sadly isn’t good enough to bring up the rest of the game. Mixing Mario Tennis’ somewhat stiff aiming system with characters that are slow-moving and occasionally even outright unresponsive on their feet, it’s very difficult to make decent defensive or offensive strategies. And while the game has some unique “minigames” like Virtua Tennis and Mario Tennis had, none are as clever as the ones those titles had.
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If nothing else, I can at least commend them for giving players the ability to unlock all kinds of new costumes and accessories for their characters, but when better games like Top Spin featured expansive character creation modes, it really makes what few achievements this game has achieved seem very insignificant.
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This isn’t an outright bad tennis game, but every game system has at least one major tennis title to offer that’s worlds better, which makes Outlaw Tennis’ gameplay obsolete, and unless you have the maturity of a ten year-old, you won’t find this game funny either (and if you are ten years old, the ESRB says you shouldn’t be playing this anyways). As a result, this is a game for extreme tennis fanatics only.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Healthy variety of animations + Nice unlockable content |
6.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Not funny and not sexy. Just groan-inducing lameness - Graphically underwhelming - Gameplay that's stiff and even occasionally unresponsive |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| There a better tennis games out there. A lot of them. | |
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Tags: Outlaw Tennis
Posted by Jake McNeill on Sep 8th, 2005 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
