Hot Shots Tennis. Seems like a fantastic idea, doesn’t it? We take all the quirky characters and the simply yet fun gameplay we’ve come to love from the Hot Shots Golf series and we put it on some clay courts and volley a ball over the net. Sounds like money in the bank to me. Yet, as awesome as the Hot Shots aesthetic translates to the game of tennis and as much as the gameplay is simple and fun, Hot Shots Tennis really has a difficult time fully living up to the hallowed Hot Shots name.

Let’s talk about the things that Hot Shots Tennis does very, very well. Gameplay consists of moving your character towards the ball and hitting it with one of three shots. You have the Lob Shot, a Topspin and a Slice shot. The Lob shot pops up the ball, giving you a shorter shot at the risk of having it smashed back to you. The Slice shot gives you a less powerful shot but limits the angle of return your opponent can use against you and the Topspin becomes the game’s “normal” shot. While the Lob shot and Slice shot can be nice additions to your arsenal at times, they really don’t factor into the gameplay enough to risk using them. Most of the time your Lob shot is going to get smashed back to you, especially in the higher level matches. The Slice shot, while being an interesting tool for working your opponent into some bad shot situations, simply isn’t effective enough to make it a good secondary to your Topspin shot. While there are some good strategies using these other shots, they really aren’t that necessary to make it through the game. This makes the game one of trying to find the best angle with your Topspin shot and hoping your opponent makes a mistake. While this makes for a simple and effective game of tennis, for those of us wanting a little bit more it makes the game feel like an overblown Ping Pong game.

Hot Shots Tennis does a good job of helping you with the timing of your shots by popping up dialogue balloons as soon as you hit the ball. There are icons for hitting the ball too early, too late or right on the sweet spot. These can really help you put the ball right where you want it on the court and helps to make your tennis game much better. In addition, there are shot indicators that tell you where your ball is going to land and they are color-coded depending on what type of shot you used. All this makes it a very simple experience to figure out where your shots go and how they might be returned to you. There is a yellow icon that flashes when your opponent has hit a lob shot, giving you a chance to stand in the yellow area for a return smash to your opponent. As far as serving goes, there are three types of tosses you can use to serve. There are weak, strong and underhand tosses and you can serve the ball flat, sliced or underhanded. All this makes for some interesting starts to the game, although the trickier serves take a little getting used to. As you play the game, your character also has a stamina bar that goes down the more you chase the ball around the court. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you don’t have enough energy to chase the ball down for a return volley.

From a gameplay perspective, Hot Shots Tennis allows you to have a really good time with the basic tennis game. Not too complicated and simplified to the point where just about anyone can learn to play tennis, it makes for a good party game with friends and family. The game features two player doubles matches and even recognizes the Multitap for two on two multiplayer action. Even if you’ve never played tennis before, the game has enough assists built in to help even the most novice player through the matches. However, if you’re looking for power shots and a more complicated game of tennis, some of the other tennis games out there may serve you better.

Graphically, the game is top notch. It looks great on the PS2 and with some of the upscaling built into the PS3, this game looks phenomenal. Great character designs in the anime style, great backgrounds with vivid colors, and the courts all look very good. The game animates incredibly smooth with no real hitches. This especially applies to the characters how move smoothly and are animated very, very well. The music is your typical Hot Shots fare with very peppy tunes helping you keep your game moving along. This game looks and sounds very good and for a late generation PS2 game you would expect nothing less. As far as the characters themselves go, unfourtunaly, they aren’t as interesting as we’ve had in the other Hot Shots games. Some anime looking girls, some anime looking guys, a couple of “zany” characters with strange costumes, a couple of secret agent looking guys. All very well done and oozing with style, just not as interesting as I would have liked.

One of the best features of the Hot Shots series is the unlockables that you get when playing the challenge mode. Hot Shots Golf for the PSP set the standard in terms of amount and usefulness of the items and it is unfortunate that Hot Shots Tennis fails to live up to this standard. While you do open up costumes for the characters, they serve only an aesthetic purpose as they do not effect the individual stats of the characters. While Hot Shots Golf for the PSP allowed you to get new clubs or balls that would improve the golf game of your character, Hot Shots Tennis has no unlockable rackets or balls. All the unlockables are simply cosmetic and as such give very little incentive to keep trying to open them. Beyond opening up all the characters and courts, the game falls flat in giving you reason to keep making your way through the game. While you can raise your “level” in terms of how hard your opponents get, you still feel as if your character never really “grows” throughout the course of the game. As this gameplay element is the heart of the Hot Shots series, it puts a serious damper on the game and makes it feel like a simple beginner tennis game rather than a Hot Shots game.










Article By: Hilden