There’s a wide variety, from more standard tennis matches to tasks that require you to hit a number of targets in a set amount of time, or rally against an opponent to reach a certain score. Just let me hit a ball with a racket, damnit.Įach level of Adventure Mode is a tennis-based challenge, battle or tutorial. There’s a story, something about needing to collect power stones, but I honestly couldn’t care less. In control of our titular mustachioed maestro, you’ll move around an overworld map, going from level to level. While Mario Tennis Aces does have some secondary game modes that feel more like a standard game of tennis – more on those later – the meat and potatoes of the game comes in the form of Adventure Mode. I wasn’t sure at first – but that’s mainly because it wasn’t quite what I wanted. But if a brightly-coloured adventure starring your favourite plumber that kind of borrows some rules from the game of tennis is what you’re looking for, then certainly you’ll be pleased by Mario Tennis Aces. If you want straight-up tennis, Mario Tennis Aces isn’t the game for you. And for a moment or two it does – until it reminds you that it’s a Mario game, and therefore it’s all about over-the-top “fun”. So I was excited to give Mario Tennis Aces a go perhaps it would fill the fuzzy yellow ball-shaped void in my life. This generation, there’s been a distinct lack of any kind of tennis game. And yes, Mario Tennis Aces offers a little of that but it also concerns itself too greatly with complicated power-ups, fanciful button-presses and a move list that’s far too convoluted for its own good. I just wanted to bat a ball to and fro while in control of Mario, Peach or Donkey Kong. In hindsight I was perhaps foolish to think that a Mario tennis game would give me a standard game of tennis. There’s just one simple thing I expected from Mario Tennis Aces: quite a lot of tennis.

Mario tennis open all rackets