Reviewed: June 5, 2003
Reviewed by: Kevin Jenkins
Publisher
Garage Games
Developer
Nerd Riot Games
Released: March 21 2003
Genre: Sports
Players: 4 / online
ESRB: Everyone
8
8
8
4
7.8
System Requirements
Published by Garage Games, Tennis Critters is a lighthearted approach to the game of the same name. Critters refers to the use of chipmunks instead of humans as players and the music, sound effects, and graphics match this theme. This give the game an immediate 'cute' appeal which is helped along by the clean design and overall polish. The chipmunks play in singles or doubles games in single player or multiplayer. Single player has 30 levels of difficulty. The difficulty level controls how accurate and intelligent the AI is. Multiplayer allows you to connect with up to 3 friends and includes the option of using bots if not enough people connect to fill out a team.
Tennis Critters is a lot of fun and very accessible to players of all levels. My favorite part of the gameplay is also the most important part, the swing system. You have a Topspin for fast shots, a Slice for when you want to put spin on the ball or get better control, a Lob for gaining time, and a Dive for those desperate shots. It's fairly easy to hit the ball and the timing system for your swings is very generous. Where your ball goes is a combination of your timing, what shot type you use, and partly controlled by the game to go somewhere 'intelligent'. I like how these factors are balanced out - hitting the ball takes skill and more skill helps you hit better, yet there's also some leeway for small mistakes.
The difficulty gradient was implemented very well. On medium the game starts out easy enough to win yet challenging enough to keep your interest. As you win games the level of difficulty you can access rises. The difference between difficulty levels is small enough you don't get frustrated yet large enough to make a difference. For more variety, you can also choose between a 'Fast', 'Medium', and 'Slow' speed setting for the overall game to match your reflexes as appropriate.
Another big plus is the AI's human-like reactions. Shots that would be harder for a human to return, such as faster or harder to reach shots, are appropriately returned by the AI. If you give the AI easy shots it will return fast aggressive shots towards the corners. Keep returning fast aggressive shots yourself and the returns will be that much weaker. Depending on difficulty level, the AI will sometimes even make the same kind of stupid mistakes a human would.
My biggest complain would be in doubles game the AI has no concept of teamwork. Both players run towards the ball even if one player would obviously be able to return it. One might argue that people in multiplayer games do the same thing. However, the AI takes it to extreme where both players will run up to the net and dive towards the ball at the same time. After a few volleys the AI players are usually on top of each other performing the same reaction to every return. I always wind up quitting doubles and going back to singles.
The graphics and models are simple but they fit the theme perfectly. The chipmunks are very cute. Animations are simple but equally cute and appropriate to the situation. I noticed the animations use additive vectors so you can do two animations at the same time and they blend together as such. Pretty impressive. You don't have the fancy special effects you see in modern games, except shadows, but I never once missed them.
Sound takes the same approach as the rest of the game. Simple, clean, and perfectly suited to the style of the game. There are two short musical themes that endlessly repeat yet are 'fun' enough to listen to I didn't mind it. The few voice effects are equally simple yet match the style of the game. If chipmunks could talk I bet that is how they would sound.
As a single player game I would give a much higher value score to Tennis Critters. However, it seems that demo players can't play with retail players online. While there are a few demo games running, I never saw any retail games running. Tennis Critters lasts quite a long time in single player, but like any game you need multiplayer for longevity and without opponents you aren't going to be playing much.
Even if there were players you'd have to find someone to play with a very low ping because of the weak network coding. Among other things, the developer made swings server side that were reflected by the client. This kind of networking model should never be used with time dependent input. When it is, such as was done here, you always swing late even when your swings are correct and the game becomes unplayable. Normally I'd knock off points from gameplay for this but since there aren't opponents anyway it comes out of potential value.
It's worth mentioning that you can theoretically have up to 4 players on the same computer. However, most keyboards cannot register more than 3 key presses at the same time so it's not like the hardware out there can support that many people. Besides which, how can you physically have 4 people all on the same keyboard? The best that can be managed is to have one person on a joystick and another on the keyboard. It's a nice gesture to put this in but what the developer really needs to do is improve the quality of the network code and make the demo network compatible with the full version.
It's hard to find a gamer more jaded than I am. It's not unusual for me to buy a $50 game and literally get bored enough to never play again within the first hour. Yet Tennis Critters kept my interest for a couple of days, something only the best-designed games are able to accomplish. If you were to use that point of view then Tennis Critters is a great buy. However, the weak multiplayer should be a factor when considering the longevity of the game. If you really like the single player, or know somebody you can play multiplayer with, then the $20 price of the game would be money well spent.