As Tennis Addict from Hexacto loaded on my prototype Smartphone, I briefly fantasized about a game involving strung out tennis stars. Instead, as the game began, I was given amazing graphics, solid gameplay, and a really positive feeling about the direction of mobile gaming. Very rarely can I say that I would play a title for hours on end, but that's how I feel about this game.
One of the first cool things about Tennis Addict is your ability to select from a bunch of fictional tennis stars, each with his own specific stats and appearance. As you play this star, you have the opportunity to face the others in either an exhibition or a tournament mode. Tournament mode is the better of the two because it creates a ladder match between all the players.
The Tennis Addict gameplay is tight. The players hit forehands, backhands, volleys, and smashes with admirable fluidity of motion, and the graphics are clear and beautiful. Tennis Addict should be noted as the first mobile phone game to include realistic voice commentary (!) throughout the game, which is a great addition to a tennis title.
The controls are simple and intuitive. Perhaps my only qualm was that a little too much of the player's movement is handled automatically. This approach is designed to work around handset control limitations, but it is a slight drawback. It's easy to use a directional pad in conjunction with a couple of buttons in, say, Mario Tennis for the Game Boy; but it's not so simple to do that with a phone with small buttons and no chording. Control remains the final frontier for mobile gaming
Tennis Addict is one of my favorite sports titles and deserves a place in any Smartphone owner's digital library. So next time you see a guy with bloodshot eyes staring at something clutched in his hands, remember that he might be a junkie, but he might also be a Tennis Addict.
