It’s the end of January, 2020 and you know what that means… The Australian Open is upon us. Actually, its in full swing by the time you read this. Go Coco!!
Anyways, I have been itching to play a solid tennis game and it seemed that Tennis World Tour: Roland Garros Edition was the latest and greatest. I saw the reviews when this game first came out more than a year ago, and while they did discourage me from purchasing the game then, I read that the game had seen considerable improvement over time. On top of that, I was heading up to the mountain for some quality family time in the snow and could really use a good game to help pass the nights.
Next thing I know, I am downloading the game off of the eshop for $29 + Roland Garros DLC which added another $10. All in all, more than $40 for a game that’s been out a lonng time. I was skeptical before with the poor reviews, and now the heavy price tag, made me even more on edge.
Download completes, and I go through all of the initial tutorials. Okay, graphics aren’t terrible and the game seems alright…maybe I made a good purchase and I can have a solid virtual tennis career here. Right?
Let’s not get ahead of myself too much though. After the tutorials are over with, I go ahead and create a player for career mode. Eh..is this really all the customization options I am going to have?
Um…okay I guess I will make this generic guy and beging my mission towards #1 in the world.
First match…seems alright..but…wait…
Crap! The game just crashed back to the system startup. Okay surely that must have been a one off, right?
Start the game again and thankfully my generic dude is still there waiting for me…okay no loss. I can accept that. I begin the first match and starting to win fairly easy. The buttons are mapped just right and the game seems to run pretty well for a Switch game. Nothing mind blowing, but it seems to look and feel like I would expect.
Wait a minute…I just hit the button to swing…why didn’t you swing the racquet?
Nice rally and finally I get the win!
Yay, I get to level up my guy. I am going to put all my points into Serve and Volley.
Let’s play the next match on the calendar…oh wait…crap…………………………..system crashed again………………………………………………
Okay, now something is up. My Switch never crashes…something is not right here.
Few minutes pass by and I am back into my career and well into my next match…
Are you fricken kidding me. Why is my guy not swinging when I clearly hit the button?
Okay…this might not be the typical review format, but I wanted to give you a somewhat play-by-play of my experience with this game on my Switch. This game caused me more annoyance than it was worth…especially after having just spent over $40. I did keep playing the game through the weekend, eventually making it through May. I had an agent, a trainer, and some perks for my player. The career mode was actually done pretty well. Nothing fancy, but it kept things interesting and I enjoyed the choices and progression system.
Now to the bad. The game must have crashed on me almost 90% of the time whenever I choose to play in a tournement. For no reason…and I haven’t before or since had a game crash on my Switch. I can forgive that to some degree as I never lost progress and only lost a few minutes of time between crash and getting back on the court. The thing I can’t forgive and what finally made me delete the game on my system was the game constantly missing my button inputs. Being in a nice long rally only to have the game decide to not swing when I clearly did, and thus make me lose the point, was beyond frustrating. This is just not acceptable period.
I am not even going to give this game a score other than a hard STAY AWAY.
Hopefully AO Tennis 2 will be better…I only wish it was out already here in the US.
