Smash Court Tennis 3

Namco Bandai's latest tennis game for PSP is a hit and miss affair.

Thanks to Pong, there probably hasn’t been a genre that has had more time to perfect its gameplay then tennis. Virtua Tennis series may have brought the genre to a whole new level of graphics and gameplay realism, but the problem was that it had an arcade style approach. This meant quick and easy to pick up but got monotonous rather quickly.

Smash Court Tennis 3, the latest instalment to the series from Namco Bandai, takes a different approach, going more with a Tennis Simulation RPG and steering clear of quick thrills. In many respects Smash Court Tennis 3 pulls this off flawlessly. Merely jumping in and taking on your first tournament and expecting 1st place results usually ends up with your character being knocked out in the first few rounds.

Unlike many before it you don’t get to pick from a list of famous tennis stars. Instead you get assigned the task of creating one from scratch, choosing their preferred style of play and assigning their stats. As your character increases their level you can add more points to your preferred stats, RPG-lite-style.

For those finding it hard to adapt, there is an intuitive training mode that gamers can tackle before they start taking on the real game. One completed you should be taking on the world's best before you know it.

Sadly this is the game's downfall. It seems that the developers have spent a lot of time putting a tonne of content in this game, but forgot to write some decent AI for the your opponents. Numerous times the AI doesn’t appear to attempt to run or even hit the ball back, even when they’re standing right next to it.

This does appear to get a little better the more you go into the game, but higher standards have already been set years before this release and we expected more.

Another small bug reared its ugly head when the AI was serving the ball. The sound of the ball being hit and when the ball actually comes at you are out of sync. This meant that you’re expecting the ball to come later or earlier then expected and can through off your return shot. This only happened a few times, but in a game where timing is critical this was annoying.

After all is said and done these minor glitches are definitely over-shadowed by an overall great gaming experience. Smash Court Tennis 3 comes complete with multiplayer over wireless and even has game share, perfect for when you've reached #1 in the world.