Alex Reviews Apps: Review: Stick Tennis

Stick Tennis is perhaps the best tennis game for mobile devices that don't end in DS or SP, but is it actually any good?

Graphics:
The UI is very well done. It's slick, it's clean, and it's shiny.

The characters are similarly well done, and the animation is smooth for the most part. There's some slight jerkiness when moving between running and swinging the racket, but I'm not expecting incredible motion interpolation from a 2D mobile game, and the speed of the action hides it pretty well.

The backgrounds, and the courts all seem to be built out of the same basic parts. They look good, but they're not overly impressive.

Sound:
No music that I could find. There's a little bit of cheering and groaning from the crowd, and the umpire is suitably cold and impartial. The few grunts you hear from the women get a little annoying after a while, and there only seems to be one racket swing and one ball hit, both of which get old really fast. The fidelity is fine, and overall the umpire's sounds make up for the lack of variation in everything else.

Gameplay:
This is where Stick Tennis really falters. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the platform, there's only so much you can do. You can tap, and you can swipe. In this case, you tap to toss the ball up on a serve, and you swipe to hit it. Changing the direction of your swipe has a moderate affect on where the ball goes, but sometimes it doesn't seem to make much difference. You have no control over the movement of your player, or the power of your shot; both are automatic. I found myself getting incredibly frustrated at my player's inability to put the ball where I wanted it, or to even get to the ball.

The timing on returns is very harsh. You have a very, very small window in which to hit the ball, and since you have no way of controlling when your player will (or even if they will) be near the ball, there's far more guesswork involved than I'd like. With a little practice, I was able to return the ball with some regularity, but I still experienced far more missed swipes of the racket than I was comfortable with.

There are seven ways to play: Four tournaments, a daily challenge, practice mode, and world domination, where you take on some of the all-time greats to prove your worth. They all seem to be more or less the same, though. The ball may move a little bit faster on grass courts than on clay, but I couldn't really tell the difference. All the opponents seem to play pretty much the same, too. Then men serve faster, and overall, the higher-ranked players seem to hit the ball faster, but there doesn't seem to be any discernible difference between their ability to get to the ball when it's on their side of the court. Having a lot of options is nice, but you're mainly choosing between playing on a blue background or a green one.

The free version gives you access to the first round of each tournament, and you can pay $2.99 to unlock the rest. But, I fail to see how games in the second round would be any different from those in the first.

What I liked:
-The UI is excellent.
-The animation is more than sufficient.
-The umpire is a cold, unfeeling bastard. Just as he should be.

What I hated:
-When playing in a tournament, you have to wait a few seconds for the game to calculate the results of the other brackets before you can get to the action. Seems unnecessary.
-Most rounds feel exactly the same.
-Window in which to return the ball is very small.
-Incredibly limited controls make for frustrating gameplay.

Final Verdict:
Stick Tennis is a slick production with a lot of time and effort behind it, but the limited controls and lack of variation in the gameplay mean the game just plain isn't much fun. Tablets and phones just aren't the place for a tennis game, unfortunately.