Mario Tennis Aces

Features:
There are a bunch of modes in this game. There is a story mode called Adventure Mode, Tournament Modes, both single player and online, a Swing Mode which is tennis with motion controls, and their Free Play Modes, which can be an online, local, or single player. The game also has two different tennis modes. Simple which is just normal tennis and there is standard which is tennis with the usual Nintendo flair such as special shots, zone shots, trick shots, etc.

Story:
On a normal day in the Mushroom Kingdom, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi all become possessed by a tennis racquet. Peach and Daisy head out to save them when Mario and Toad walk in and say “let us do it, you need to stay here and get kidnapped again” and by “us” he means “Mario will do all the work and I will critique your skill when you screw up”. They then head out to get all 6 infinity stones which will make them strong enough to kill um, I mean to defeat the evil tennis racquet.

Presentation:
First, let’s talk about the art style. There isn’t much to say here. It’s just a normal Mario Tennis game, so don’t expect anything special

Now let’s talk about the music. Just like a normal Mario game the music is amazing, though the music is pretty extreme for being tennis music *Play music*. Even though the music doesn’t fit in with a tennis game it still gets you into the mood of a MARIO Tennis game. So, for a Mario Tennis game, the music fits and it makes the game really enjoyable.

Gameplay:

Adventure Mode:
I had a lot of problems with this mode. My main problem is, it’s boring and much too easy. The bosses are fun but pose little challenge. I feel like if it was harder it could’ve been a lot more enjoyable and it definitely would’ve put your skills more to the test. When playing the bosses, I never had to try more than 3 times which makes it so when you win it’s like big whoop. When you beat a boss, you’re supposed to feel like you just accomplished something. With this game, it doesn’t feel like you accomplished anything. Though this all excludes the final boss which I’ll talk about now. The final boss was the opposite of the previous bosses. The final boss was challenging, extremely fun, and when I beat it I felt like I accomplished something. It’s not the hardest level ever, but it was still difficult enough to be rewarding when I finally beat it. If there is one thing to replay in the story mode, it’s the final level. Though take that with a grain of salt because I’m no expert at this game so as far as I know, that battle is still extremely easy for the average player

Now that we talked about the bosses, let’s talk about the normal levels. The levels were flat-out boring.

There are four different types of levels:
1. There is a normal tennis match
2. There is the type where you rally the ball back and forth between you and a computer until you rally a certain number of times
3. There is a type where you hit the ball against boards to get points
4. The last type is where you rally a ball into all the enemies’ faces

I disliked all of these modes as they were boring and extremely repetitive. By far my least favorite level was the second to last level. It wasn’t difficult, it was just annoying. In the first part of the level, you have to fight Wario and Waluigi. You play as Peach and your partner is Daisy. This part is a piece of cake and I beat it on my first try. In the second part, you play Mario and you fight Luigi. When this part came along I thought it would be a piece of cake… well I was kinda correct. It was easy and it only took me three or four tries, but whenever I died I had to play the whole match over and over again. I also dislike doubles in this game – which I will discuss later in this review – so that made this level even worse.

Now let’s talk about some nitpicks I had with this mode. Whenever you died you would have to sit through Toad giving you useless tips, and if he wasn’t giving you lousy tips he would be saying things like, “Don’t give up.” You can skip the opening speech bubble after you view it once, but no matter how many times you view the “loser speech bubble” it will never let you skip it. On top of that, there is no way to avoid it because there isn’t a restart button, there is only a quit button. When you press quit you have to listen to toad critique you again, so there is no way to avoid toad Toad’s annoying unskippable pep talk. It’s nearly as annoying as the DS Castlevania games where you had to restart from the home menu every time you died.

Despite all of my complaints, I somewhat enjoyed the story mode. There were a few enjoyable levels and even though I thought the bosses could’ve been harder I still enjoyed them. I wouldn’t replay the story, though and I definitely wouldn’t buy the game just for story mode.

Tournament:
The mushroom and flower cup were too easy. They took me less than 8 minutes to win and the ball never came close to passing me. There was no challenge and it was really boring. The Star Cup is harder but still not very fun. I wish there were a couple things more in tournament mode. I wish that there was a tournament mode where you can set a difficulty level and even though I hate doubles (which I’ll get to why in a minute) I still wish there were doubles tournaments.

Online tournament:
Now to my favorite part of this game, the online tournament. I fell in love with this mode the first time I played it. I like the simple tournament, but the main mode I play is the standard tournament. The primary reason I like the Online Tournament is because I love playing against actual people instead of computers. Tournament mode makes it even better since you are playing against multiple people and not just one person over and over again. Everyone has a different play style, so whenever you play against a new opponent the match gets mixed up a bit which makes it that much more enjoyable. I enjoy this mode and this is the main mode I play.

Swing Mode:
This mode isn’t bad, but it doesn’t work well. There are moments where the game thinks I swung or where it doesn’t realize I swung. There are even moments where my character will have a spasm of 3 to 4 swings when I’m not doing anything. It gets really frustrating when it doesn’t work, but when it does it’s really fun. I actually like most motion controls, unlike most people. I like the interactive experience and with a tennis game it really fits in. It doesn’t feel like you’re actually swinging a real-life racquet, but it’s still fun. Though the problem is it rarely works smoothly for the whole round so it can be very frustrating. This is probably my least favorite mode in the entire game because of how inconsistently it works.

Free play:
I don’t really like any of the single player modes in this game and this is a good example of why. All the AI’s are boring to play against. They all have a predictable pattern that’s really easy to learn. The doubles mode is even worse though. The AI on my team is always worse than the AI on the Computer’s team. You depend on the AI to help, but it really just hinders you. The AI will be right next to the ball and it forgets to swing. The incompetent computer decision making even occurs when the CPU was set to the pro level. It makes for a frustrating experience and causes me to really dislike doubles. Overall, I didn’t really enjoy the single-player free play.

Online free play:
The online free play is one of my favorite parts of this game. As I said earlier, I like playing with real people as opponents which makes it a lot harder and more enjoyable since the player won’t just forget to swing his racquet (well usually they won’t). Though I do wish you could turn off KO kills on the online mode because it’s annoying when the round gets cut short because of your racquet or the opponent’s racquet. I also wish you could increase the number of racquets per game. It’s at a standstill of 1 racquet, but I would prefer if there was 3. If they changed that then I would love the mode even more. Besides those two critiques, I really love this mode.

Conclusion: This game definitely isn’t worth $60 especially after they begin charging a $20 subscription fee for online play. All of the features in this game except online are boring. This game should’ve been priced around the $30 range at most. I don’t regret buying it by any means, but if you’re planning on buying it, make sure you have a good internet connection and wait until it’s on sale. When it comes to the game as a whole, I’ll rate it a 6/10. If I was just rating the online mode, I’ll give it a 7/10.