In theory, tennis is perfectly suited to video game form. Essentially the nature of the sport is a bit like Pong, one of the seminal foundations of gaming, albeit with a lot more variables and nuances. But it has translated well onto many home micros and consoles over the years, not to mention in arcades, where SEGA drew big money with the exceptional Virtua Tennis series. The problem is, that most of the genuinely great tennis games lean into the coin-op style of play or add slight fantastical elements to make the experience a fun one.
The aforementioned AM3 smash (pardon the pun), the Mario Tennis franchise, Super Tennis for the SNES, and the underrated Namco Smash Court series have all earned their place in sports game folklore. When someone goes full-simulation with tennis, however, things have always tended to be a little dry and unappealing.
Big Ant Studios are past masters of engineering sports titles, predominantly those that are suited to their native Australian markets, but they have form with previous tennis games AO Tennis and Tennis World Tour 2, not to mention the original incarnation of Tiebreak, of which this is a features-packed update release for the Switch.
Tiebreak+ goes slightly against the grain in that despite presenting a faithful sim of the sport, it has fairly breezy gameplay that errs more toward the titles I mentioned previously than the likes of TopSpin. It also has a serious amount of licensed content thanks to the tie ins with the ATP and WTA, and refreshingly everything is there for the taking out of the bag, with no annoying microtransactions or extra money required to spend on things. The only slight downer is that it does not hold the license for the big four grand slams, but with well over 100 real life tennis stars you cannot really grumble, even if the onus is on the villainous Novak Djokovic, a man for whom the term “questionable views” could have been coined.
When you fire it up, Tiebreak pushes you straight into a superb tutorial mode which demonstrates each and every mechanic of the game. All of the different shot variants are on offer, and as well as getting the hang of executing these you also control the scramble of your player (sprinting to the appropriate area of the court from which to strike the ball). This adds an additional strategic layer to gameplay that really makes you think about things like momentum and opportune angles from which to play your shot and take advantage. Thanks to the depth of the tutorial, which doesn’t let up in terms of halting your progress until you nail the mini-missions it serves up to you (there I go again with the puns), when you do step onto court proper for the first time you will likely have a decent enough grasp of things to mix it up when you play the various modes on offer.
I like the way that the distinct personalities of the real-life players has been taken into consideration and whilst the Switch visuals don’t quite stack up against the higher powered consoles, the models are excellent and you can definitely see and feel the little foibles of legendary players like Federer, Nadal, and our own Andy Murray, who is present here in a mysteriously un-retired form.
Gameplay modes on offer include a complete calendar of real ATP and WTA tour events to participate in, and a surprisingly deep and character driven career mode where you can create your own tennis avatar and start from the bottom, taking in not only the matches (against real players and a load of NPC tennis-bots), but also answering questions in press conferences which can both enhance or ruin your reputation, and enticing sponsors to boost your revenue. Bringing in more cash means that you can pump money into your coaching and conditioning entourage which in turn allows your player to recover from the fatigue of playing and travelling around the circuit. It is a bit like a more true to life sim of the way your player requires recovery time in the old Virtua Tennis World Tour mode, if you remember that.
Novak may not be everyone’s favourite sportsman, but there is no questioning his standing in the history of the sport as one of the very best to ever do it. It lacks the Slam licenses but the Novak Djokovic Slam Challenge” allows you to relive some of the Serb’s greatest rivalries and matches, a bit like what 2K do with their WWE titles. Your mileage with this may depend on your tolerance for the cover star, but is well implemented nonetheless.
Tiebreak+ is a content laden package that plays a decent game of tennis, however I do have a few criticisms. Due to the simulation nature of the gameplay, and the fact there is no pared-down arcade style mode, the matches themselves can last for a long time. If you are really going at it hammer and tongs then it is not unusual for a match to go deeper than an hour and this was a bit of a turnoff for me. Oddly, despite the developers having garnered support from real life players about the gameplay, and done hours of motion capture, there doesn’t seem to be any detectable difference in the playing surfaces. Given how in reality there have literally been some players who were unable to capture their devastating form on more than one surface type (think clay court wonders Gustavo Kuerten and Thomas Muster in the 1990s), this seems a strange oversight.
Despite some slightly muddy visuals and a few dodgy animations, Tiebreak+ looks pretty good for a Switch game and real credit has to be given to Big Ant for their work on this translation. This is probably the best tennis sim available on the console, and for hardcore fans of the sport is well worth a purchase.
