Game Review: Outlaw Tennis
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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that OUTLAW TENNIS features references
to lap dances and a female character who propositions a ball
boy. There is also wanton boozing, and uninspired vulgarities.
Male characters are either anatomically grotesque or wildly
violent. Female characters are drunk, over sexualized, or both.
All flesh jiggles with abandon. On court fighting is rewarded,
and one cut scene implies torture. On the whole, the game is an
adolescent celebration of bad behavior.
Families who buy this game may want to talk about why all of this rudeness is supposed to add up to good fun. Is there something inherently pleasurable about deflating a polite, country club sport like tennis? Is the game trying to undermine the sport's elitist qualities or is it just looking for a quick, lewd laugh? This is part of a series; why do Outlaw games keep getting made?
Common Sense Media Review
Outlaw Tennis marks the series' latest foray into "polite"
sports, having previously unleashed raunchy humor and bad
behavior to golf and volleyball. The idea has potential: A
contingent of criminals, lowlifes, and freaks tear up the
country club in an attempt to critique a well-mannered sport.
Too bad the game matches uninspired, lewd humor with tedious
gameplay for an experience that fails on almost every
account.
Players control tennis troublemakers on their quest for, well, nothing. There is no point to the game but participating in a seemingly never-ending series of matches to unlock new characters. These new characters allow you to play another seemingly never-ending series of matches to unlock another character. And so on. The only real motivating force behind the game is revealing new characters so you can watch their behavior in environments ranging from a drug kingpin's estate to Hell.
And that's where Outlaw Tennis spends most of its time. Sixteen different characters give players lots of opportunities to explore the game's bad taste. But whether you control the well-endowed Don Juan, the part-time stripper, the alcoholic groupie, or the Brooklyn-bred goodfella you'll have to endure a long line of lewd jokes based on racial stereotypes, binge drinking, loose sexuality, torture, and crime. Bosoms bounce. Pants stretch. Bourbon is guzzled.
These jokes are delivered through cut scenes after each point is scored, interrupting the flow of the game. So once you've experienced the full range of humor each character has to offer, the very thing that makes Outlaw Tennis different becomes frustrating, and boring.
Which is saying a lot because the gameplay itself is nothing to write home about. The controls are easy to pick up: four different buttons deliver four different kinds of shots, with a turbo and spin modifier to add some flare. But despite attempts to liven the actual tennis with creative changes to the rules (ping-pong scoring, an exploding ball and etc.), Outlaw Tennis gets old really fast. Not even the ability to fight your opponent -- which consists of 30 seconds of button mashing -- offers any satisfaction. Add to that flat graphics, a clunky game engine, and animations that get reused in montages, cut scenes, etc., and you have a real loser of a tennis game.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
