Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Tennis in the Face is a physics based puzzle game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Tennis in the Face is an even more humorous take on the physics based puzzle genre in comparison to 10Tons’ King Oddball.
Pete Pagassi is a former professional tennis champion that has encountered a downward spiral after becoming addicted to an energy drink called Explodz which has resulted in him being a school tennis coach and entering rehabilitation in an effort to no longer be addicted to the drink. Knowing that there is no way back onto the professional tour; Pete Pagassi seeks revenge by setting out to find the source of Explodz and freeing the citizens from its addiction, although in doing so the entire city population who are already addicted to Eplodz will be against such actions and will stop at nothing to stop him succeeding.
The purpose of the game sees the player hitting anyone that attempts to get in their way of bringing down whoever is responsible for creating Explodz with tennis balls. The scoring system works by providing 1,500 points for the first hit of an enemy, 2,000 points for the second hit, 2,500 points for the third hit and increasing by an additional 500 points hit by hit, while 200 bonus points are awarded for each headshot and a further 200 bonus points are awarded for each hit to a vending machine.
Medals can be earned by achieving particular objectives outlined for each medal, although the medals are the same as the trophy list but an entertaining way of informing players of their progress through the trophy list, while crowns can be earned for having multiple tennis balls still available to serve even the level has been completed.
There are various gameplay elements that are gradually introduced such as a Ball Tube containing multiple professional quality tennis balls which will all be released when hit; glass and hard materials that will burst tennis ball and prevent it from continuing to bounce; bottles of Explodz that will detonate potentially setting off a reaction between multiple materials; and reinforced obstacles that can only be destroyed by a corrosive material such as Explodz.
The character design is pretty good as players will encounter a new enemy in each set of levels such as clowns in the first district, riot police in the second, trendy people in the third, scientists in the fourth and many more besides as play progresses from district to district, while there are hilarious ragdoll physics that will show enemies crumpling to the floor or falling into each other.
The environment design has a variety of structures and buildings in the background from city streets to scientific labs with each separate environment having a colour to represent it and provide a different flavour to its nature and freshen up the design.
Tennis in the Face supports the share feature that allows players to upload a video clip or a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as the game is being experienced with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores the most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so players still have the chance to decide if they would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between game footage and player’s reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future. The Share Play feature provides a platform for a gamer that does not own the game to take control of the game started and invited that person to play, although it only lasts for one hour; it is a great service as it effectively presents a one hour demo of the game to anyone invited who does not own it, while being an excellent sociable feature too.
The controls are simplistic and easy to learn as the control scheme consists of pressing X to serve a tennis ball; pressing triangle to restart the level in case of a mistake being made; changing the direction of the left or right analogue sticks or alternatively pressing left, right, up or down on the d-pad to change the direction of aim; pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. The touch pad provides an alternative control scheme by gently swiping across the touch pad to adjust the aim and tapping the touch pad when ready to swing the racket. The colour of the light bar on the DualShock 4 controller remains the same standard colour throughout the game, which is a surprise as there could have been some experimentation in this area of the controller as a neutral colour such as green could have been assigned when the tennis ball was being served with enough tennis balls left to realistically complete the level, an additional colour could have been assigned for when an enemy has been knocked out such as orange and the light bar could have changed to red to represent when players have run out of tennis balls to knockout enemies with. There is no vibration from the DualShock 4 controller, which should have featured heavily considering the amount of impacts taking place from the tennis balls throughout each level as players knockout enemies.
There is a charming cel-shaded graphical art style combined with humorous character animations and ragdoll physics as they are hit by the tennis balls, while there are subtle touches such as the trail of the tennis ball as it moves around from surface to surface and Pete dripping in sweat when he has taken his final swing of the tennis racket with the added pressure of not having knocked out all of the enemies surrounding him knowing that one misplaced shot could result in failure.
The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, level selection menu, options menus and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left and right analogue sticks, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the touch pad. The background of the menu screens revolves around a cityscape with buildings on the skyline, while the interactive main menu allows players to aim the tennis ball as the lead character Pete showcases his tennis skills as he is serving tennis balls in what could only be described as tennis meets pinball.
The audio consists of sound effects and music with the sound effects including humorous sounds when enemies have been hit with a tennis ball, while bluesy rock music provides the soundtrack. The DualShock 4 speaker is unused which is surprising as it could have produced the humorous sound effects or soundtrack.
The trophy list includes 12 trophies with 7 bronze, 4 silver and 1 gold trophy. The easiest trophy has to be the Main Menu Enthusiast for scoring a total of 1,000,000 points in the main menu as players only have to sit back and wait for the total accumulation of points to reach that total, while the majority of the trophies are much harder, although could be naturally achieved without trying, but some luck instead such as the Serves Them Right bronze trophy for knocking everyone out with a first serve in a level that has at least 3 or more enemies; the Sparing Bounces bronze trophy for knocking out 5 enemies before the fourth bounce; the 25k bronze trophy for scoring 25,000 points with a single serve; the Tennis in the Face bronze trophy for getting 5 headshots with a single serve; the 100 Bounces silver trophy for serving a ball that bounces 100 times; the Explodz Junkie silver trophy silver trophy for knocking out the 6 opponents with a single Explodz explosion; the Vending Champion silver trophy for destroying 3 vending machines with a single serve; and the 10Tons Defeater gold trophy for defeating the 10Tons crew. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 5 to 10 hours to 100% the trophy list.
There are no difficulty levels, although the difficulty curve will progressively become harder as the riot police from the second district have riot shields making them harder to properly hit and the scientists in the fourth district require two hits to take them down due to them wearing hazmat suits, which is a positive design choice as it is balancing out the difficulty as players become more accustomed to the game in order to still create a worthy challenge.
There is no local or online multiplayer component, although a competitive local and online multiplayer for two players to compete to achieve the quickest time for knocking out the targets in any given level would have been a great addition; as would have a co-operative multiplayer mode for two players to take turns attempting to knockout targets, which would have also worked well as a hot seat pass the controller game mode.
However, there are online leaderboards focusing on global rankings and friends rankings with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and their total amount of points accumulated with the positioning of each player based upon their total points, while they cover grand score, tournament and coins and are separated into such criteria as spare tennis balls and crowns earned for completing a level with spare tennis balls.
The replayability of Tennis in the Face stems from the medals earned for achieving a variety of objectives, online leaderboards to provide competitiveness to the gameplay and an addictive style of gameplay that encourages players to have one more go which are all qualities that will also certainly benefit the Vita version which is set for release in the first quarter of 2015.
Overall, Tennis in the Face is just as entertaining as King Oddball and if you are a fan of physics based puzzle genre, then this is an absolute must purchase as it is an addictive game with a lot of fun to offer and is exceptional value at just £3.99!
Jason Bonnar
Analysis
- Title: Tennis in the Face
- Developer: 10Tons Ltd
- Publisher: 10Tons Ltd
- System: PS4
- Format: PSN Download
- Cross-Buy: No
- Cross-Play: No
- Players: 1 (Online Leaderboards)
- Hard Drive Space Required: 45MB