Tennis Game

The Good
I am a tennis player for some 20 years now, and the best compliment I can make to a tennis game is that playing it feels like playing tennis. I tried many tennis games over the years, but few captured the tennis feeling well. But exactly that is where "Tennis Game" by Gamedesign shines. Although being a simple browser game of roughly half a megabyte, once you've mastered the controls it becomes the heck of a lot of fun to chase and hit the ball - and finally win the tournament.

And - believe it or not - when I don't get around to go out and play the real game, playing this browser game keeps my tennis tactics brain cells fit.

The Bad
Now I could start whining about the developers giving me more complexity like doubles play, human vs. human, career mode or giving me more candy like better graphics and sound, but I don't do it. Hey, it's a free browser game, it's some lunch break fun, so these complaints are irrelevant.

Instead I want to raise some points that in my opinion could have been done better.

AI:

Sometimes your alter ego will swing a forehand where a backhand is appropriate and vice versa. It doesn't happen often, but it's frustrating when it does. Also, the computer player sometimes just stops playing and stands still - maybe in assumption that you can't chase down her last ball or that she can't chase down yours. This looks strange.

Difficulty:

Right now in exhibition mode, I can prevail over a maxed out computer player with my own player's statistics down to 2. You can imagine that winning the tournament then becomes just too easy. It's not that "Tennis Game" is easy for beginners, but I would wish for a wider spread possibility to adjust the difficulty of the game.

Options:

Although I stated earlier that whining for added complexity is nonsense, I think that some options would have been easy to implement. For the next version of this game I wish for a male tournament, adjustable set length and tie break option, adjustable tournament length, and side changes.

The Bottom Line
If you're into casual games and tennis - try this game. You're gonna love it.