There have been many a variety of Tennis games over the years, from the officially licensed to the ‘spin off’ games with characters like Mario & Sonic. Many have tried and (in my humble opinion) failed to turn the popularity of tennis from real life to the virtual world. Tiebreak is a new entry in the Tennis genre, published by Nacon and developed by Big Ant Studios. Do we finally have a tennis game that will serve up some smiles or are we heading for a deuce?
Tiebreak has plenty to offer when it comes to game modes. Tutorials has its own tab and I advise you to go here first given that Tiebreak is a new franchise, so some of the basic controls will differ. Tiebreak is the official game of the ATP and WTA and you can play in any of the tournaments on the calendar, including the ATP or WTA finals in Turin or Riyadh.
You also have the Djokovic Slam Challenge where, beginning from his maiden win in 2008, you can relive all 25 of his career slam wins. Unfortunately Tiebreak doesn’t have the license for the 4 major slams, so it is a shame to have this Djokovic challenge but not be able to experience it at the official slams.
The meatiest mode by far is of course career mode where you can take over the career of an existing roster member or make your own character in either of the ATP or WTA tours. Creating your own character is for sure the hardest challenge. Your overall rating starts at around 43, which in comparison to the lowest official player – 73 – means you’ve got a long journey to try and make it to the top. You don’t always play one of the (55 female & 66 male) official players. There are plenty of fake players to fill spots when you’re playing in the lesser-known tournaments, and when I say plenty, my guy was ranked as 509th in the men’s rankings at the time of writing and was down in the 600’s when first starting
The most important part of any sports game is the gameplay, and unfortunately this is what lets down Tiebreak the most. The players feel heavy and clunky running around the court. Even the best players like Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz are hard to control, so you probably imagine what it’s like at the start of your players career, when Djokovic being 93 rated against your player at 43…
Shots feel inconsistent as well. A lot of times when I’m trying to line up a shot it will run in the direction rather than playing the shot. At first I thought it might have been a skill issue on my part but when playing online against other players I saw them experiencing the same issues.
A big part of tennis is serving; it can be a learning curve as every player has a different action when serving and it can be hard to adjust if you’re swapping between real players. The AI has no difficulty in serving though – it’s something I feel needs adjusting. I can’t remember how many matches I’ve played but I can certainly count the number of times the AI made a first service fault on one hand, more often than not, the AI would finish the match with a 100% first service rate where I was in the 50%-60% range. This was also the case for the people I played online against. In none of the 6 matches I played did anyone have over a 65% first service success rate.
The difficulty settings aren’t quite right either. There are 5 difficulties to choose from, but the jump from easy to medium seems a bit extreme. On easy you can win every point at a canter, but if you put it up to medium, it feels as if you’re having the match of your life. On easy I was able to dispatch an opponent in roughly 15-20 minutes, winning the match 6-0 6-0, however on medium the match lasted 1 hour and 12 minutes, but this time winning 6-2 3-6 6-4. As satisfying as it was winning the match on medium, I feel there needs to be something in between so players can be eased into the higher difficulties.One last thing in match feature I’ll touch on is the crowd. Within Tiebreak, you’re able to react either positively or negatively after a point has been won or lost. Reacting at the right point can get the crowd behind you or more into the match but unfortunately, whilst the noise is good, it doesn’t quite influence the immersion of the match. I’m showing my age here (again) but one of the best tennis games ever created was Pete Sampras tennis on the Mega Drive, yup, going all the way back to the mid-90’s. The crowd reactions in that game at important points in matches is still to be matched to this day. In a close match the crowd would really be pumped up and at certain points would just burst into a fit of cheering or encouragement. The in-game umpire would have to say ‘quiet please’ 3 or 4 times before they settled down, and this was on the Mega Drive! No Tennis game I’ve played since has been able to create that level of immersion
Conclusion
There’s a lot to get your teeth sunk into in Tiebreak, but with matches on medium difficulty lasting over an hour, this certainly won’t be a pickup and play game, and with the mentioned issues with gameplay, Tiebreak won’t be something I return to on a regular basis.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
