Smash Court Tennis 3

7.4
Good

Gameplay	8.0	"Serves a grand slam, but hits the net."
Graphics	8.0
Sound	7.0
Value	7.0

By Nick Barber

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In the real world, I can’t swing a tennis racket to save my life. But in Smash Court Tennis 3, I can be Roger Federer, slamming tennis balls across the net with the greatest of ease: a promising concept. Smash Court Tennis 3 for the PSP represents everything we’ve come to expect from a modern sports game. It gracefully treads the line between sports sim and arcade basher; it even throws in an RPG-like leveling system. Smash Court Tennis 3 provides everything but the kitchen sink, but does that weigh it down?

Sports games are notoriously esoteric, yet Smash Court Tennis 3 provides an accessibility that definitely works in its favour. The controls are explained via a pretty thorough tutorial, after which you’ll be blazing top spinners over the net, and chasing that fat prize money. The control system is a big plus; each shot type (topspin, slice, lob and flat shot) is allocated a button on the PSP. Additionally you can hold down buttons for power shots - which you generally rely on for winning matches. The controls may be easy to learn, but like any good system, they’re challenging to master. Timing is everything in Smash Court Tennis 3, and each shot relies on precise timing for full mastery. Different surfaces affect the bounce and trajectory of the ball. Occasionally if your footwork is fast enough you can step into a spot shaped like a tennis ball to deliver earth shaking jump shots.

There are two main modes in the game: ‘Arcade’ and ‘Pro Tour’. The arcade mode is exactly what you’d expect: you begin by choosing one of sixteen professional players, including such elites as Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova. This mode is pretty light and straightforward; but the game really shines in Pro Tour mode.

Pro Tour is like the career mode in most sports games: you create a player and enter tournaments in search of money and glory. This mode really stands out because of the experience point system. After each match you are awarded experience points based on your number of wins in a tournament. These points can be spent to upgrade your core skills or to unlock new shots and techniques. Hence, even if you barely make it half way through a tournament, your efforts are never in vain, as you will have at least a handful of points to bolster your character. The Pro Tour mode is further fleshed out by letters you receive: offering obtainable doubles partners, invites for new tournaments and even the occasional fan letter.

The presentation overall is incredibly slick. Player animations are rendered perfectly for the PSP’s parameters. The PSP’s 16:9 widescreen is a great display for tennis. To accompany the visuals, the sound is equally as adept. Each shot reverberates off your racket in a satisfyingly realistic way. Some additional features in Smash Court Tennis 3 are: Ad Hoc multiplayer, mini-games, exhibition mode, and an array of ‘challenges’ to sharpen your skills. At first, the sheer number of options is staggering. But after a serious amount of play time, it becomes obvious that the glut of additional features is merely padding out its single interesting mode. Despite the excellent Pro Tour mode, the game has some unfortunate shortcomings.

The first of these is the mini-games. It appears these fun little time wasters are increasingly popular these days. When done well mini-games can be tasty little nuggets of gaming goodness; but Smash Court Tennis 3 obviously doesn’t have the recipe. It offers only three games; the first two are based on other popular Namco franchises Pac-Man and Galaga. These are abysmally bad. The former involves hitting giant Pac-Man tennis balls across the court which is scattered with pellets; points are obtained for each pellet, with the odd piece of fruit appearing as per the source game. The latter has the players buffeted by a fleet of Galaga ships, which must be destroyed before points can be scored. The third game is bomb tennis which, as you probably guessed, involves lobbing bombs back and forth until they explode. None of the mini-games have any depth whatsoever, and in total are interesting for about thirty seconds. They don’t appear to be very well thought out, and are simply tacked on to add another bullet point on the back of the game’s packaging.

Another major underachievement is the character creation system. We’ve already seen character creation taken to great heights with tools such as EA’s ‘Game Face’. But here we’re presented with a lackluster version with very little customisation. To add insult to injury, your character’s modifications are microscopic once in play; so those fancy new shows you bought are just a couple of shiny white specks on the court. Therefore the time it takes to make your character is rather pointless; yet another token distraction from the core of the game.

The frame of Smash Court Tennis 3 is well formed, but the accessories draped off it are ugly and weigh it down. The Pro Tour mode is well laid out with the experience point system, but the gameplay itself is repetitive. Fans of tennis are in for a good time; but anyone else should probably sit this one out. On a technical level, the game is adept in every way - but its lack of any substantial variety is a serious weak spot. Overall there’s nothing to really set it apart from other tennis games. It plays well, it looks good, and it’s pretty accessible - but that’s about it. The developers appear to have ticked a lot of boxes in the features department, perhaps in order to make up for the lack of real variety. If executed well, this could have been a stand out title; instead it hurtles straight towards the net of mediocrity.

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