A good, but imperfect game. Reviews must consider the three main aspects of this game separately: the offline multiplayer mode, the single-player career mode and live-enabled online tournaments. Having only indulged in the first two (so far) this is where I will focus.
Firstly, the two-player (four in doubles) is very enjoyable, but it does matter which players you pick as their abilities affect play. This is good if you are training a custom player and taking it to your friend to play against their own, and provides a natural handicapping system when playing against someone less/more experienced, but it would have been nice to have players of equal skills that were different in appearance: four Pete Samprases on a doubles court is a little odd. Doubles is fun with three semi-inebriated friends, but strangely mixed doubles isn't available as an option. Suffice to say the multiplayer is good enough that I bought a friend his own copy so he could practise before he next came over.
Career mode adds training and sponsorship challenges, tournaments of increasing difficulty and the option to spend prize money on new clothes and equipment. The jury is still out on how well balanced the AI is - I seem to have gone from flawless victories to humiliating straight sets defeats rather too quickly. Perhaps it's just me - the game certainly "feels" like tennis, has intuitive controls, and - a good sign in any sports sim - I've developed a greater appreciation of the real thing through playing it - but I'm worried that many of the pros in the top 10 will prove unbeatable through their almost telepathic ability to read and return shots. This may place a low ceiling on single-player fun.
Other gripes: the character customiser produces mostly ugly, masculine faces (the selection of women's hairstyles being particularly appaling); the clothing shop interface is incredibly slow (and you can only configure two outfits in your bag at any one time) and a little buggy (defaulting to the wrong outfit or even crashing a couple of times), which makes you want to not use it (downloadable content/patches would be good here chaps); there is no variety in the background music; you can't save mid-game (criminal - developers: make use of the hard disk for crying out loud); and it is missing many well-known players and competition licences.
These are all fairly small moans. Overall, a good tennis game, but with room for improvement.
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