It's fun for a while
Graphics
Nice colourful graphics, good to see all the mascots sonic tails, super monkey ball, jet set radio and even classic characters like ones from golden axe. The framerate is generally very fast exept for the occassional slow down when things get hectic. The presentations of the menus, loading and everything has that Sega charm to it.
It runs about 60fps during singles matches, but doubles and some minigames its about half that. So there are some noticeable slowdowns
Gameplay
It's fun at first but then you realise that the controls are somewhat limited compared to the likes of virtua tennis or. The AI occasionally just stops and lets the ball go right pass them which I found funny. Maybe they got distracted by some character in the background?
How much control you actually get over the ball, like the jet set radio level where you have to physically go backwards to hit the ball to the front. The winning strategy seems to be to get to the net and make them run side to side until they can't get there in time, im sure there is more to real tenis than this. This plan sometimes failed when you character mysteriously hits the ball to hard and it goes out randomly. You don't seem to have much power over the ball and this can happen a lot and be really game breakingly annoying
I know this is the same with regular tennis, but matches do go on a rather long time, and tournaments with many player to go against. are unbearably long
The tennis is only part of the game, each world has quite a few mini games based on the games tennis engine, like avoiding guards on the court, knocking over zombies in haunted mansion, or hitting monkey balls into hoops, a 'puzzle bobble' style game where you combo hit block These mini games are actually very fun, and as you unlock more the variety gets nice. Pitty most people will not play this long enough to unlock them.
Multiplayer
The game is great for a quick 4 player, fun cartoon tennis match. I brought it to a party and set it up with a projector and it was popular with casual gamers because of the ease of play.
Characterization
The characters have special abilities usable in a match and gained by sdads, an example is aiai whos attaches bannaas to the ball which can be slipped over. Some reviewer said they broke up the action, I thought they were a nice addition, especially when multiple players used there the chaos was great. But thankfully there is an option to shorten little cutscenes.The characters also specialize in different areas for example sonic is speed. In fact this is the only real way that each character can show their unique personality, apart from this they seem to play identically which sucks. Some of the powerups (like Glillians) seem overpowered, (completely debilitating vs a minor annoyance) which is great for single player but not so in multi
Customization
Some characters can be better for different sub games, like speedy characters for dodging ones
Learning curve
It's pretty simple to pick up, no tutorial was given and but there is info given on button inputs in the options menu after you get bored of pushing A and hoping to win
Achievements
There are 45 achievements in this game. Some of the more creative ones I liked were, hitting a sega mascot on the sidelines with your ball, and an 'Outrun' award for running loads of miles.
Music
Its got official sega tracks obviously, everything here is right. Mini Winning tracks play on top of the background music when you score a point which sounds horrible as mixing two track always does. The characters all sound like they did in there respective games. They make noises everytime they hit the ball which for some characters is fine, but some characters have annoying voices so this can get on your nerves.
Audio
'Captain onishima failed to stop me, just like you' A pathetic attempt to add realism to the character.
Storyline
The evil Dark Lord Xetus is trying to take over Sega world and the Sega mascots must play tennis in order to build up their muscles to defeat him....actually no it's just a tennis game. Sometimes its pretty funny too, like when Robotnic is facing Sonic. You could imagine him saying 'I'll just finish this match Sonic, and then I'll kill you, Ok?' I remember when Robotnic was a scary bad guy... It might have been nice if Sega had done something like what Super Smash Bros and Final Fantasy Disidia had done with explaining WHY these characters all decided to have a tennis match.
Progression
The main game takes place on a sort of 'world map' board thing with different sega license zones like sonic world and jet set radio world. You start with 7 worlds but you can unlock 9 more as you go along. You can also unlock characters, levels and music tracks by achieving certain 'grades' in matches. However the only grade that seems to matter is 'A' for passing. Would have been nice is there was rewards for lower or higher grades. The presentation of the unlocks is fun and rewarding. The variety of choices for which type of mini game to play is quite fun
Value for Money
It's one of the cheapest games to buy for the xbox second hand, it came free with the arcade xbox and lots of people didn't like this game much. Its easy to overlook as a cheap cash in game, but it can actually be a lot of fun for a while, especially with 4 players and a nice big screen.