A current trend in independent gaming is for developers to take games made for mobile phones and make them multi-platform. Tennis In The Face is another one of those, and I guess it makes business sense but it makes me wonder if we need this kind of game on consoles. This type of game doesn’t really need a back story, but we get one anyway, albeit a bit flimsy. You play Pete Pagassi, a disgraced tennis star whose career was ruined by an addiction to an energy drink called Explodz. He is now on a part crusade, part revenge mission to rid the world of this evil drink by taking out anyone associated with it. The story is fed to you by newspaper headlines and the odd lame joke at the start of every section but on the whole its irrelevant as you just want to do what it says in the title and start whacking tennis balls into people’s faces.
There are 120 levels of the game to play through, and as you’d expect things start out fairly basic and the difficultly ramps up as you progress with ever more complex domino effect physics for you to work out. Your main projectile is the tennis ball of course, which you can aim with a crosshair before firing off, and the ball will ping around the screen at high velocity for quite a while before losing momentum and disappearing in a puff of smoke. There are plenty of obstacles in the way of you and the bad guys so you need to judge the angles right so the ball deflects where you want it to go. A lot of the time this must be done with pinpoint accuracy, but the ball bounces around for so long that if you are slightly out you might eventually get lucky with one of the rebounds. There are objects placed statically that can help you, such as smashing glass panels to open up a route through, or maybe that hold up a barrel that will fall on your enemies’ heads. Wooden planks can be hit into new positions to make a good angle to deflect your next shot, or a tube of tennis balls than when hit explodes its contents in different directions. When you get to latter levels, as well as the tennis ball, you get cans of Explodz to use as projectiles, which you lob into areas for a delayed explosion.
The cartoon style of the graphics is nothing to write home about but seem to fit the game well, but the success of this type of game is all about the physics which seem to be spot on. Once you get the domino effect going and can chain together some explosions, enemies will be knocked out in all corners of the screen with just one ball fired. You can even get lucky thanks to the ragdoll effect of the enemies when they are knocked out, with their lifeless bodies often being thrown into nearby enemies or setting off more explosions.
The game is probably best played in short sessions, as you can fly through the levels pretty quickly, and it doesn’t take much to unlock the next section, so you’ll only really go back to replay completed levels if you’re after the bonus for a perfect run. It rarely took more than 3 or 4 attempts to complete a level, possibly because you can aim more accurately with the controller than you can on the touch screen of the phone on the original incarnation.
Because you can progress so fast, its all starts to become a bit monotonous and the sense of triumph you might feel for acing a level first time will soon turn into a bit of a grind. The soundtrack doesn’t help things as the music isn’t annoying at the start, but when coupled with the sound effects it doesn’t take long to grate on your brain.
If you’re the breed of gamer that likes to pay attention to gamerscores this is a good game for you as it shouldn’t take too long to rack up the magic 1000G, yes there’s the odd tricky one in there but they are achievable with a bit of perseverance and most of them will be attained without trying as you play through the game.
Tennis In The Face is nothing new in this genre of gaming and its very likely you’ll have something fairly identical already installed on your phone. Its best played in short bursts to pass a bit of time, so maybe if you’re waiting for you latest game to down load or your pizza delivery is still 10 minutes away, and at a well priced 4 quid, then why not just pass the time smashing tennis balls into people’s faces!
A Huge Thanks to XCN for the review copy.
Developer: 10tons
Publisher: 10tons
Price: £3.99