Sega Sports Tennis

"Too Difficult"

I'm going to make this review short and sweet, so that everyone can understand the most glaring fault with the game (if you haven't understood it already from the tagline):

The game is too difficult.

I know that the first thing that people will think is... I'm not good enough. Maybe. Let's just ignore the fact that I'm unbelievably good in all the previous Sega Sports Tennis games and can beat most of my friends 80% of the time. I have probably logged over 50 hours playing Sega Tennis 2K2 and the original Virtua Tennis combined.

So here's the situation. I pop in my brand new Sega Sports Tennis into my PS2, hoping for some of the old sweet tennis arcade action that i had on my dreamcast. Besides the fact that the graphics seem to have actually degraded (thanks the PS2's crippled graphics) and seems to be running in some cheesy line doubled 640x200 mode, everything seems to be going okay. I beat the first 2 opponents in less than 40 seconds. This is too easy, I thought. When i entered the semi's, I had to use one continue, and I thought ''hrm, this is sorta getting tough''. But I could still handle it.

It was not until I got to the final round, that I realized how insanely difficult the CPU is. I spent nearly 30 continues trying to beat him, and you know what? I still couldn't do it. And this was on a 1 round setting, so all i needed was just a single game. Yet the CPU played so flawlessly, it felt like I was against a robot that never made a mistake. I have an IQ of over 140. You'd think that after 30 continues, I'd scrape up at least a single win, especially if the game was on ''Normal''. Such was not the case. I understand all the dynamics of the game, how to establish proper position to get power into the shot and such, but the CPU was just unbeatable. He would get every single shot, including ridiculous ones such as returning a powerful smash right at his feet. He would smash my MAX serves right down the line with absolutely no hope of me even getting close to the ball. Maybe a problem with the serve positioning? I tried all kinds. Deep, shallow, wide... it makes no difference. The CPU just randomly smashes the ball down the line no matter what you serve.

And so, the next day, I returned it. Maybe there's some divine art to this game that I don't understand. But what I do understand is, a non-mentally-retarded person should be able to beat any game on normal without having to think too hard. Otherwise, the game is just plain frustrating, and no longer fun. And that's what Sega Sports tennis is. Frustrating. I just don't understand the difficulty. It skyrockets so much at the last stage I can only wonder what the developers were thinking.

There's not much else to say about the rest of the game, other than it still sports the same engine as the previous 2K2 game on the Dreamcast. You can read other reviews if you're interested in the rest of the details. This reviewer however, thinks this game belongs in the garbage for a poorly designed difficulty curve.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/03