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"The Jet Gamer" Game Review: Mario Power Tennis (Wii)
9 years ago
We continue with the original Wii games.
Mario Power Tennis (Wii)
Two Mario games in a row is definitely something I don’t get to do that often. The price point often times keeps me away, but I managed to stag this one for free in a buy two get one sale. Mario Tennis eh? I remember playing one of those long ago. This is the first time I will get another shot at this series in quite a while. I wonder if the Tennis games in the Mario series hold up as well as the golf games tend to do? We will have to take a closer look to see if the Wii edition of Mario Power Tennis is a good one or not don’t we?
Gameplay
Mario Power Tennis is just what it sounds like when you say the name. It is a Tennis game with Mario characters. You have various different modes to play through. There is exhibition mode, which is pretty much, pick how you want to play the game, how many sets, who you are playing and against, if you want singles or doubles, and if you want any extras or not. This is your casual mode if you just want some good tennis action and to be honest it isn’t that bad. There are a variety of characters you can use in this and the other modes as well, each with their own special types, such as Mario being an all arounder, Yoshi being a speed type, and Bowser being a power type as an example of the characters you play as. If you have a type of play style you like, then pick the character that best suits your style then go for this or the other modes. There is tournament mode which offers you a set of matches in a row to get a trophy at the end before moving on to the next cup. There is also a mini game like mode where you have certain objectives you need to do with the tennis ball to accomplish your goals. Each of these modes offers their own unique experiences, but each one also has different flaws that can come along with them of course. Being tennis as well, you are pretty much only doing tennis through all this time, and with the motion controls, you actually can get a little tired if matches start to last for extended periods of time. Though another thing I noticed when playing the game is the AI’s difficulty. I hear some people say it isn’t that bad, but in my experience, especially when you take the game off of easy, the AI starts to become rather brutal quickly. On easy, the AI is a complete push over and it is very easy to win matches. Just upping it a little bit and the AI starts to fight back quite a bit. Sometimes they are easy to overcome still, but certain ones, especially if you go onto a hard AI is almost like being met with a brick wall that is almost impossible to get past. The thing as well is that the tournaments rack up in the difficulty as you play through them. To get the end of the tournaments, you have to be able to beat the hard AI and get past those really hard to get past wall characters. This can be a bit discouraging for some people, so I would recommend, unless you want a real challenge, to not go to the higher cups. If you are up for a challenge, go all out for it. The mini games as well offer their own challenge. They are fun little games that make you try and accomplish certain objectives by hitting the ball certain places. This is a great concept, but it is made very hard by the controls in this game, which I will tell more about later. As long as you aren’t discouraged by the difficulty and the controls, and you aren’t bored by doing nothing but playing tennis, then the gameplay of this game isn’t that bad, it just gets a bit marred by some other flaws in the game.
Story
Not applicable, this is a tennis game. There is no story at all.
Graphics
Honestly, I don’t have much to complain about graphics wise. What movies and action scenes there are in this game look pretty much flawless, and the characters themselves look great to be honest. It has that typical colorful look that a Mario game is going to have. Sure, there is a bit of plainness at times in the game in that you are for the most part just watching a tennis match, but you sort of have to expect that in a way. The event movies in the game, as few as they are look great and you will look forward to getting them. I would honestly like to see more of them if I could, but it would mean getting a bit repetitive and playing many different characters to do so. So honestly, this is more of a case that the good looking stuff you want to see is sort of locked behind the gameplay due to some of the difficulty of things elsewhere in the game. The game looks great, I just want to be able to see a little more of it without a fight.
Sound
The music in this game is as usual for a Mario game, pretty good. It isn’t anything spectacular though. It is just good. I don’t remember the music that well, and that sort of says something about it in general. When music is just good, but not great, you have very little to say about it as it is both good, but just not very memorable. That’s what we have here in terms of music. You are more focused on the gameplay that the music is just sort of drained out. You want music to be background noise sometimes yes, but this is just one of those cases where the music is just there. It is either neither really bad, nor does it offer that memorable feeling that you want out of the best of the best music. The sound effects though are pretty relevant though and what you will hear more than the music, at least it was to me. You hear tennis sounds of ball on racket and the sounds of grunts and noises of the characters actually trying to play the game and give it their all at times. The sound effects don’t really get old, but once again, it is just the sounds of normal tennis, just coming from Mario characters. Nothing is neither bad, nor that impressive at all about the sounds here.
Control
Alright, this is a major part of the game, and also where this game goes downhill. The controls of this game are very spotty. They do what they should, but they are just very unreliable. You can make the ball go where you want, but it only does this some of the time. Yeah, you heard me. It is a tennis game where you have a very hard time getting the ball to go where you want it to go. That’s a very bad thing in a tennis game. If you can’t reliable make the ball go where you want it to go, you are going to be fighting with it constantly and have a very hard time beating harder AI’s. That’s exactly what happens as well. You know what you need to do at times to beat certain AI’s, but since you can’t make the ball go where you want it to most of the time, you end up just lobbing it back and forth, until either you get lucky or the AI just overpowers you on the harder difficulties. You have several different shots you can do, and each of these is done by different ways you swing the wiimote. Lobs being down to up, and the soft shots being the other way around. The problem being even when you know the right ways to hit the ball, is that it doesn’t always go that way. You will try and hit the ball high, but it go low and the other way around, or not even either way at all and act like a normal hit. This will frustrate you to no end. It isn’t even limited to the regular modes as well. The special modes, the ones with the mini games suffer from the controls as well. Many of them are all about precision hitting of the ball to get certain things done. Of course, as you have just learned, precision isn’t exactly what this game is all about. This makes the mini games sort of hard to play as well. They aren’t impossible of course, but they could be better if you could have better control of the ball and where you want it to go. As I said, the controls aren’t completely broken at all, but they are more frustrating as they don’t want to do exactly as you would want them to do. They do the movements they are supposed to do, just not always when you want them to and nor do they always go exactly where you want them go. As you can see, the controls are more flawed than completely broken. If they could have just fixed these precision issues then I bet this would have been more fun to control and play.
Replay Value
The replay value of this game I feel is stuck from being higher due to the controls I just talked about. As I mentioned above as well, there are many modes in this game other than just the standard mode, and you get different little victory videos depending on who you are playing as in the game. There are the special mini game modes that you can learn to get better at as well. Then really, you can just play on your own or with friends for quite a long time. This would be a good party game, if people can get over the controls that will be very finicky with people, especially if this is people’s first time playing the game. It would be better to let them practice first before starting a party with this game. The controls could really kill the party if people aren’t used to them even a little bit. So as you can see, there is some replay ability here, it is just I feel, marred by the controls. There is a lot to offer, at least in bursts of course, but with control frustration, I can see someone giving up on this game quickly due to this frustration, even with the extra modes and small things that could extend the life of this game to some people.
Overall, I see Mario Power Tennis as something that while it is still a good game, the controls just hold it back from being the best it could be. The controls are what drag other parts of this game down. If the controls were fixed, I could see this game having a longer lasting appeal. There is some appeal here, and if you can get over some of these control issues to at least make the game somewhat tolerable to control, I can see someone getting some extended play time out of this game. If the controls get on your nerves quickly though, I can see this game being a game you put away rather quickly. It is a shame that this is the case, but if you can get over the controls, I can see how this would be a good game. It is a shame the controls affect it so much sadly.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Mario Power Tennis (Wii) a seven out of ten.
Gameplay: 8
Story: N.A.
Graphics: 9
Sound: 7
Control: 5
Replay Value: 7
Overall: 7
Mario Power Tennis (Wii)
Two Mario games in a row is definitely something I don’t get to do that often. The price point often times keeps me away, but I managed to stag this one for free in a buy two get one sale. Mario Tennis eh? I remember playing one of those long ago. This is the first time I will get another shot at this series in quite a while. I wonder if the Tennis games in the Mario series hold up as well as the golf games tend to do? We will have to take a closer look to see if the Wii edition of Mario Power Tennis is a good one or not don’t we?
Gameplay
Mario Power Tennis is just what it sounds like when you say the name. It is a Tennis game with Mario characters. You have various different modes to play through. There is exhibition mode, which is pretty much, pick how you want to play the game, how many sets, who you are playing and against, if you want singles or doubles, and if you want any extras or not. This is your casual mode if you just want some good tennis action and to be honest it isn’t that bad. There are a variety of characters you can use in this and the other modes as well, each with their own special types, such as Mario being an all arounder, Yoshi being a speed type, and Bowser being a power type as an example of the characters you play as. If you have a type of play style you like, then pick the character that best suits your style then go for this or the other modes. There is tournament mode which offers you a set of matches in a row to get a trophy at the end before moving on to the next cup. There is also a mini game like mode where you have certain objectives you need to do with the tennis ball to accomplish your goals. Each of these modes offers their own unique experiences, but each one also has different flaws that can come along with them of course. Being tennis as well, you are pretty much only doing tennis through all this time, and with the motion controls, you actually can get a little tired if matches start to last for extended periods of time. Though another thing I noticed when playing the game is the AI’s difficulty. I hear some people say it isn’t that bad, but in my experience, especially when you take the game off of easy, the AI starts to become rather brutal quickly. On easy, the AI is a complete push over and it is very easy to win matches. Just upping it a little bit and the AI starts to fight back quite a bit. Sometimes they are easy to overcome still, but certain ones, especially if you go onto a hard AI is almost like being met with a brick wall that is almost impossible to get past. The thing as well is that the tournaments rack up in the difficulty as you play through them. To get the end of the tournaments, you have to be able to beat the hard AI and get past those really hard to get past wall characters. This can be a bit discouraging for some people, so I would recommend, unless you want a real challenge, to not go to the higher cups. If you are up for a challenge, go all out for it. The mini games as well offer their own challenge. They are fun little games that make you try and accomplish certain objectives by hitting the ball certain places. This is a great concept, but it is made very hard by the controls in this game, which I will tell more about later. As long as you aren’t discouraged by the difficulty and the controls, and you aren’t bored by doing nothing but playing tennis, then the gameplay of this game isn’t that bad, it just gets a bit marred by some other flaws in the game.
Story
Not applicable, this is a tennis game. There is no story at all.
Graphics
Honestly, I don’t have much to complain about graphics wise. What movies and action scenes there are in this game look pretty much flawless, and the characters themselves look great to be honest. It has that typical colorful look that a Mario game is going to have. Sure, there is a bit of plainness at times in the game in that you are for the most part just watching a tennis match, but you sort of have to expect that in a way. The event movies in the game, as few as they are look great and you will look forward to getting them. I would honestly like to see more of them if I could, but it would mean getting a bit repetitive and playing many different characters to do so. So honestly, this is more of a case that the good looking stuff you want to see is sort of locked behind the gameplay due to some of the difficulty of things elsewhere in the game. The game looks great, I just want to be able to see a little more of it without a fight.
Sound
The music in this game is as usual for a Mario game, pretty good. It isn’t anything spectacular though. It is just good. I don’t remember the music that well, and that sort of says something about it in general. When music is just good, but not great, you have very little to say about it as it is both good, but just not very memorable. That’s what we have here in terms of music. You are more focused on the gameplay that the music is just sort of drained out. You want music to be background noise sometimes yes, but this is just one of those cases where the music is just there. It is either neither really bad, nor does it offer that memorable feeling that you want out of the best of the best music. The sound effects though are pretty relevant though and what you will hear more than the music, at least it was to me. You hear tennis sounds of ball on racket and the sounds of grunts and noises of the characters actually trying to play the game and give it their all at times. The sound effects don’t really get old, but once again, it is just the sounds of normal tennis, just coming from Mario characters. Nothing is neither bad, nor that impressive at all about the sounds here.
Control
Alright, this is a major part of the game, and also where this game goes downhill. The controls of this game are very spotty. They do what they should, but they are just very unreliable. You can make the ball go where you want, but it only does this some of the time. Yeah, you heard me. It is a tennis game where you have a very hard time getting the ball to go where you want it to go. That’s a very bad thing in a tennis game. If you can’t reliable make the ball go where you want it to go, you are going to be fighting with it constantly and have a very hard time beating harder AI’s. That’s exactly what happens as well. You know what you need to do at times to beat certain AI’s, but since you can’t make the ball go where you want it to most of the time, you end up just lobbing it back and forth, until either you get lucky or the AI just overpowers you on the harder difficulties. You have several different shots you can do, and each of these is done by different ways you swing the wiimote. Lobs being down to up, and the soft shots being the other way around. The problem being even when you know the right ways to hit the ball, is that it doesn’t always go that way. You will try and hit the ball high, but it go low and the other way around, or not even either way at all and act like a normal hit. This will frustrate you to no end. It isn’t even limited to the regular modes as well. The special modes, the ones with the mini games suffer from the controls as well. Many of them are all about precision hitting of the ball to get certain things done. Of course, as you have just learned, precision isn’t exactly what this game is all about. This makes the mini games sort of hard to play as well. They aren’t impossible of course, but they could be better if you could have better control of the ball and where you want it to go. As I said, the controls aren’t completely broken at all, but they are more frustrating as they don’t want to do exactly as you would want them to do. They do the movements they are supposed to do, just not always when you want them to and nor do they always go exactly where you want them go. As you can see, the controls are more flawed than completely broken. If they could have just fixed these precision issues then I bet this would have been more fun to control and play.
Replay Value
The replay value of this game I feel is stuck from being higher due to the controls I just talked about. As I mentioned above as well, there are many modes in this game other than just the standard mode, and you get different little victory videos depending on who you are playing as in the game. There are the special mini game modes that you can learn to get better at as well. Then really, you can just play on your own or with friends for quite a long time. This would be a good party game, if people can get over the controls that will be very finicky with people, especially if this is people’s first time playing the game. It would be better to let them practice first before starting a party with this game. The controls could really kill the party if people aren’t used to them even a little bit. So as you can see, there is some replay ability here, it is just I feel, marred by the controls. There is a lot to offer, at least in bursts of course, but with control frustration, I can see someone giving up on this game quickly due to this frustration, even with the extra modes and small things that could extend the life of this game to some people.
Overall, I see Mario Power Tennis as something that while it is still a good game, the controls just hold it back from being the best it could be. The controls are what drag other parts of this game down. If the controls were fixed, I could see this game having a longer lasting appeal. There is some appeal here, and if you can get over some of these control issues to at least make the game somewhat tolerable to control, I can see someone getting some extended play time out of this game. If the controls get on your nerves quickly though, I can see this game being a game you put away rather quickly. It is a shame that this is the case, but if you can get over the controls, I can see how this would be a good game. It is a shame the controls affect it so much sadly.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Mario Power Tennis (Wii) a seven out of ten.
Gameplay: 8
Story: N.A.
Graphics: 9
Sound: 7
Control: 5
Replay Value: 7
Overall: 7
