Outlaw Tennis

When the first Outlaw Golf game was released a long while back it took the sport of golf to new wacky heights with mixed results. With an assortment of off-the-wall characters that range from strippers to an Eminem wannabe white rapper named Ice Trey, the game injected much needed humor to an otherwise serious sport. Then came Outlaw Volleyball, quite possibly the second sexiest and unexpectedly addictive volleyball game available on the Xbox. Now the crew of misfits are hitting the tennis courts with Outlaw Tennis and the sport will never be the same again.

The series’ main attraction just so happens to be its cast of characters that are stereotypical yet still able to get a chuckle out of gamers that just so happen to catch a glimpse of them. All the returning characters from both Outlaw Golf and Outlaw Volleyball make an appearance in this game so those fans of sexy blonde bimbo Summer and the lovely Native American beauty that is Shawnee will be happy to see them make their return. Yet unlike the superior Outlaw Volleyball where the commentator’s jokes were actually funny, the jokes fall flat in this game.

It’s all about the tennis, though, and Outlaw Tennis handles the sport rather well with its mixture of regulation-styled rules and arcade-like wackiness. Yes you can set the rules and play tennis the way it was meant to be played but the real fun is in the game’s insertion of turbo-charged shots, Outlaw Drop Serves and fist fights (yep, they’re back). The game feature’s five game modes: Quick Play, Exhibition, Tour, Outlaw Drills and Xbox Live online play. You’ll want to start with Outlaw Drills, a game mode that serves as both a training tool as well as an RPG-styled leveling up of skills like endurance or accuracy. The mini-games are also downright fun. Some of the drills have you knocking down a row of butchers attempting to reach a cow while another has you attempting to protect a miniature-sized city from rockets.

Once you finish up the Outlaw Drills for your chosen character (you start off with four but you can unlock many more), you’ll have enough skills to survive the game’s Tour mode. The tour takes you through a series of matches (both single or doubles games) as you attempt to reach the top of your tennis-playing career. It is here where you get to unlock characters, new courts (like the one in the front lawn of the White House), clothing and accessories (glasses, hats, shoes and tennis rackets) and even movies. With a hefty 80 or so matches you can expect a lengthy tour with a good variety of game types.

Exhibition mode allows you to chose from the seven game types like Classic, Casino, Football, Baseball, Ping Pong, Hot Potato and Pinball. The more offbeat modes like Hot Potato and Pinball are the game’s best game types. Hot Potato, for example, uses the same standard rules but when a meter fills up the ball explodes so make sure you not on the receiving end. Pinball has bumpers scattered throughout the court adds up points each time the ball lands on it. Casino adheres to similar rules as Pinball but here its how much money you make that wins. Football and Baseball simply use terms connected to each term. For example, 40 Love is a Home Run in the Baseball game while each point you make in Football is measured in yards.

The problem with Outlaw Tennis isn’t so much the controls, which are actually perfect enough to simply just pick up and start playing, but the fact that the things that were meant to be outrageous just hold the game back. The fights lack finesse once again and it simply becomes a button-mashing mess rather than an enjoyable distraction. The same can be said about the Outlaw Blocker, a “fiberglass” barrier that slides back and forth and just serves to annoy than add more challenge (thankfully you have the option to have it disabled). Yet the biggest letdown is that the humor that, while the game remains to be sexy in a good goofy way, there are no real funny moments in the game. The commentator’s jokes are just not as witty as the ones heard in Outlaw Volleyball and a lot of it just becomes too repetitive.

As far as the graphics are concerned, Outlaw Tennis shows off neatly rendered character models that are expressive and display more comic relief than the dialogue. If you’ve played both Outlaw Golf and Outlaw Volleyball all the gestures and posturing of the returning characters will be familiar. El Suave still admires himself, Donna oozes Italian Jersey girl charm and Ice Trey still thinks he’s the funkiest non-brother around. There are tennis courts in the most unusual of locations (Hell being one of them) but they are not as interesting as the characters.

The game’s sound is filled with a rocking soundtrack with tracks from some unfamiliar artists like Sunshine or The Dolphins. It’s your basic heavy rock riffs that you’d expect from the Outlaw series but rarely does it get tiresome. The voice acting is still done excellently and listening to the madcap collection of zany characters act their part is fun. It’s just unfortunate that the dialogue just isn’t too funny. In fact, its double-entendre quips are more vulgar than clever.

Not as funny nor as deep as the volleyball game in this zany sports series, Outlaw Tennis still an amusing game of tennis worth playing. It’s not an easy feat to make a tennis game really fun but Global Star manages to pull it off well enough. Yet it’s loss of genuine laughs and mishandling of fun gameplay mechanics make this an Ok sports game. I recommend this as a rental, sports fans.

Gameplay: 7.0
The tennis action is decent enough thanks to the great pick-up-and-play controls but it’s the more outrageous game modes like Hot Potato that dominate the tennis court. There are a nice number of extras to unlock in the game’s main mode but the humor is missing-in-action this time around.

Graphics: 7.5
The character models are, once again, excellent and thusly makes each character (from El Suave to Donna) bursting with personality. They also look good during the action and during the brief animated cutscenes. The environments, on the other hand, are not so great.

Sound: 7.0
With a variety of rock tunes from some unknown artists you won’t hear the same song twice during Tour mode and while it’s generic rock it’s really not all that bad. The voice acting is also pretty good but with the unfunny dialogue it’s all wasted.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
Even with an Amateur difficulty setting the game is still pretty darn challenging. The Tour mode gets harder the higher you climb the circuit ladder but then again the opponent AI suddenly drops IQ points faster than Andre Agassi’s serve.

Concept: 7.0
All the usual Outlaw themes are present and accounted for but all the humor of Outlaw Volleyball has vanished. There are some fun game modes like Pinball, Ping Pong and my new personal favorite the Outlaw Drills. There are also loads of clothing options and accessories to unlock as well as more venues.

Multiplayer: 8.5
The game runs at a really steady framerate online so it feels as if somebody was sitting right there next to you playing along. You can create some interesting matches and you can always team up with a friend and play a great game of doubles. The game also supports System Link. Yay!

Overall: 7.2
Unfortunately, Outlaw Tennis missed the mark in the humor department but there’s still plenty of tease and fun to be had here. If it’s a deep tennis game you’re looking for this isn’t it, but it’s still worth a rental.