Sometimes sports games try a totally control scheme that revolutionise how that genre of game is played. Think The Golf Club and the way it used analogue sticks to judge force and accuracy with a flick as an example. It was so vastly different from pressing three buttons on a power gauge or arc, it was fantastic but also threw gamers into a tailspin. Twin Stick Tennis aims to do something similar on the tennis genre with a unique control scheme. Whilst it is certainly very different, I’m not sure its quite as successful. It does make for entertaining matches though.
The key here is that Twin Stick Tennis requires analogue stick arcs to hit the ball. You move your character with the left stick to position the character in the trajectory of the ball and then do a half moon 180 flick up and round or down and round to hit the ball and follow through. Depending on how quickly you arc the stick and how much you follow through the arc to completion determines the speed and trajectory of the ball. If you don’t move the bat, its the equivalent of a punt and so the ball won’t go very far.
This might sound really simple to do but I honestly spent the first half hour of playing Twin Stick Tennis feeling very lost. I kept following through the arc too far and my ball would fly off to the side and out of the court. I’d then not arc as much and the ball would either hit the net or just go in a straight line. It feels quite inconsistent at first but the more you play, the more consistent you get. That said, I never felt fully in control, although a friend I played with gel with it more than I did. As Tennis was proving so tricky to have a rally, I found Paddleboard much more fun. Here, you can bounce off of walls and the court isn’t really full of peril and so you could devolve the game down into a crazy high speed rally of chaos. You can also turn on double bounces, not being able to hit the player and a few other rule changes too.
The other cool feature is a court resizer. You can choose from grass, clay or sand and then reshape the width and length of the court walls and sections. There are only a few sliders to change the courts but they make huge differences to the way you play and when mixed up with the rule changes, you can make a very different game. It is a shame then that you can only play 1v1. Not having 2v2 feels like an oversight. Thankfully, the AI has a GOAT meter to alter their skill and aggression. At the same time you can choose (and unlock) different tennis bats of various sizes that alter the speed, accuracy and hit space of your character. There is also a single player hi score return volley mode against a ball machine that fires tennis balls at an increasing speed. You have 30 lives and once you miss 30 balls, its game over.
Alongside the unusual twin stick batting approach, helpfully aided with on screen UI, you can also use the shoulder buttons for changing shot types. If you hold one of the buttons down when you hit the ball, you can smash, lob, volley or punt the ball and this adds a real dynamism to each rally. Easy AI can be overcome by hitting left then right and varying shot types but harder AI and real players are much more resilient. When both players are in control of the ball and start mixing up the shot types, Twin Stick Tennis shines. It’s just not one of those games where you can all get up to speed in 60 seconds though. It takes time and that’s quite a hard sell for a casual party sport game with very minimalistic graphics.
This all leads to the question of Twin Stick Tennis’ intended audience. It is too difficult to be a casual pick up and play game, unless you use Paddleboard mode. It requires time and investment to really become competent with it, but lacks modes and variations outside of court reshaping to cultivate a cult following. There is something fun here though, it just feels a bit of a rough diamond that could become a niche party and eSports classic if the innovative control scheme could really show it was consistent with its inputs, Until then, I’ll be keeping it on Paddleboard mode and introducing it as a chaotic wall tennis experience with intentionally silly physics. It’ll make it less daunting for new players and maybe more people might embrace it and learn its intricacies.
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