Tennis

Way back at E3 2011, in that Wii U reveal that rather bizarrely confused half of those watching, Nintendo showed remixes of Wii Sports events that showed the GamePad being utilised in creative ways. It's perhaps surprising that over two years after that visual demo the Wii pack-in finally made its way to Nintendo's latest system, and Wii Sports Club: Tennis is the title which entry that perhaps utilises the new hardware the least. There are enhancements served up, however, which aim to take the fun but throwaway waggle of the original and apply a little more complexity and longevity.

The most important change with this new iteration is the adoption of Wii MotionPlus controls, with the more accurate controller being mandatory to play. The greater sensitivity and range of strokes is applied reasonably well, with lob shots, top-spin and back-spin applied along with greater control over direction. The new move-set is undoubtedly challenging to master, though that's to be expected, and moments where we felt the input and response weren't a match were — in hindsight — mostly down to our own sloppy swings. A forceful swing (remember that wrist-strap, for the sake of your TV screen) will actually register with a more powerful hit, for example, so waggling your way to victory is off the cards.

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Overall, we feel that Nintendo's done a solid job with the controls, with the only downside being that over-sensitivity can occasionally prompt a swing while, for example, trying to setup a lob. They're not absolutely perfect, and though rare there are moments where the controls genuinely misbehave, while the spin on the ball — applied with a twist of the wrist — can feel negligible.

To Nintendo's credit it has added some fun challenges to help you grasp the new controls, named 'Skill Shapers'. Ring Master is self-explanatory, as you accumulate points by accurately targeting your shots and, if you're feeling clever, the occasional lob. Mole Commotion is the weakest of the three offerings, as you smash the ball at multiple pop-up moles worth different point values; while you can technically aim for more awkward 3-point critters, the best tactic is to simply hit the ball hard and hope a kind bounce will accumulate multiple hits. Duck Dash is a clever inclusion, as it encourages you to move your shots around the court, so provides useful training for real matches.

In terms of actual matches there's Single and Local multiplayer, of course, adopting largely the same setup as the original. Your player level can be increased when taking on the computer AI — as it does in online games — and whether you play solo or with a friend every match is Doubles; this is probably to account for the slow moving Mii characters. The gameplay as a whole is still pedestrian and you simply focus on playing shots as you're automatically manoeuvred around the court, with forehand or backhand choice being the extent of the control over your Mii's movement. That slow tempo is understandable, especially as these are designed to be the most accessible games available, and with the newly precise controls the occasional fast serve is about as intense as it gets. Playing with friends is still oddly compelling and fun, despite this low-tempo simplicity.

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Online multiplayer, which consists of first-to-seven-points single matches, supports playing with Everyone in your region, those in your Club or Friends. Bizarrely, setting up a match with those on your Friend List is annoyingly fiddly and imprecise. Even when in phone conversation with our test subjects we struggled to hook up, possibly due to the clunky interface. There's a "waiting area" where you can see those awaiting matches, and then you can enter the area yourself so visible to others. When both in the pre-match warm-up the game wouldn't connect us, and it felt by chance that after failing to connect we'd then see the other in the first lobby screen.

It then becomes a rush to select that player, as you only sit in the pre-match warm-up connection screen for around a minute before being told no games are available. As the system somehow couldn't see us both warming up and put us into a game together, getting kicked out to the opening lobby to select the other is the only way we could get it to work; they weren't always visible though, so it almost defies logic. It also seems that the choice of single or local co-op restricts the match-ups even in this mode, so our friends had to play this lonesome reviewer one at a time, after navigating the tiresome process. Perhaps they're early growing pains with the online setup, but playing a Friend was unacceptably clunky.

Playing random online matches is infinitely easier. In fact, we'd barely hit Start and begin to gear up when we'd be dropped into a match; it's at once a wonderful and frustrating experience to finally play Wii Tennis online. We'd say around a third of our matches were butter-smooth, enjoyable contests, another third were a tad laggy but workable, and the final third had a connection so poor that it was a waste of time. The Miiverse messages that periodically pop up on the GamePad screen — not that you're really looking at it often — suggest others have had similar problems, and considering the simplicity of this game it's an undoubted disappointment. It really is a lot of fun when a lag-free match comes along, so the inability to simply opt for a rematch is curious; after each match you can only quit or go back to online game selection.