Created by New Star Games, the one-man-show indie development studio owned by Simon Read and the same company behind the great New Star Soccer series, New Star Tennis takes the same concept from the soccer game and inserts it into the wonderful world of tennis.
In other worlds, it puts you in the shoes of a wannabe tennis superstar who’s aged 15, has no money and barely any tennis skills. But you have a dream – that of becoming the number one tennis player in the world and competing against the grands! Will you be able to do it? It’s all up to you.
Especially since you’ll have to buy stuff in order to improve your stamina and speed, you’ll need to be always happy and well rested. While resting is easily done via a resting option, happiness comes from a few other minigames: a racing minigame (and pretty well done, too), as well as others. I personally went for the darts minigame as my only happiness provider since it’s the quickest and easiest to master.
And only after you train well and get at least a few stars for each attribute, you can try to compete against the New Star Tennis AI players. It will be an almost impossible job – winning, that is – but it’s worth trying and practicing even more and eventually getting it right. It’s like in real life – you can’t expect to see any 15 years-old get on that court and beat Rafael Nadal… oops! I mean Nidal!
Add to that the fact that the controls are rather strange – you control both your character and the place where the ball goes using the same keys – and you’ll get yourself a few headaches to start with. But once you get used to the controls (and it won’t be an easy job!) you will be able to enjoy every game or practice and, even more, you’re going to feel the complete thrill of winning matches and beating your opponents.
The sound and visuals of New Star Tennis follow the same route of top indie games – they’re not memorable, or eye candies, but they’re not things to disgust you either… I can say that things could’ve looked and sounded a bit better, but things also could’ve been a lot worse!
New Star Tennis is a challenge and is probably a game that tennis fans would love more than gamers looking for entertainment. It is a very difficult game to master, but this shouldn’t be always considered a Con… too easy games will turn us into stupid monkeys, like those in the Hollywood flick Idiocracy, and we don’t want that to happen. Therefore, we can only be happy that a challenging – yet fun and really well done – game like New Star Tennis is out there, waiting for us to purchase it. So at least try the demo and see how the game feels!
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