Matchpoint - Tennis Championships

Review

After years of commitment, sacrifice and hard work, you finally turn professional. Your dream of becoming the next Andre Agassi, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Bjorn Borg, or Raphael Nadal is just around the corner. But before becoming a household name, you must keep improving your game with intense training and compete in as many tournaments as possible to continually improve your world ranking. And if you are good enough, you might even test your game against the best players at one of the Grandbear Slams! So, start with an ace, fight for every point to win a game, set and Matchpoint – Tennis Championship.

Matchpoint – Tennis Championship is a tennis game simulation developed by Torus Games and published by Kalypso Media on the 8^th of July 2022 on the Steam platform. The game is also available on PS4/PS5, Xbox, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

It has been a while since I had the opportunity to play a tennis video game. The last game that I played was one of the Virtua Tennis series. So, I was really excited to see how far this type of simulation has evolved in terms of gameplay, entertainment and replayability. It is Tennis, and not being a hardcore fan of the game, I was also curious to find out if this game would grab my attention long enough to enjoy it.

The game consists of Career, Arcade, and Multiplayer Modes. I tried to launch a multiplayer game several times, but I could not find a game. It basically searches for players in the same region as you, and the match will start automatically when two players of the same region are linked up. You also have a thorough tutorial which I recommend completing. It is short and fundamental to understanding the game’s mechanism.

So, I tried my luck with the Career mode. The first thing you must do is create your tennis superstar and customise his/her looks and outfits, which is always a bit of fun. When you are done, you will start your career by playing the last game of the Adelaide tournament. After that, your world Ranking will be around 250, and you will have access to the calendar where you can access tournaments, exhibition games and training sessions. There are three levels of difficulty in Matchpoint, which are Amateur, Semi-Professional and Professional. Personally, I find the Semi-Professional not challenging whatsoever, as I rarely lost a game in the entire match. You will get some good exchanges during the match but nothing very challenging if you are really good at playing this. For me, it was imperative to improve the difficulty to keep me entertained and even after that, it was not that challenging.

Nonetheless, I had fun playing the game and you do have to change your style a bit depending on what surface you are playing on. The exchanges will be slower on clay while the speed will increase playing on artificial or grass courts.

As you win tournaments, you will receive items such as shoes and rackets, which will increase some of your skills (forehand, backhand, serve, volley, fitness and power) when equipped. You will also gain access to new coaches. Make sure to select a specific coach before each training session so you can further improve your skills. All coaches have different attributes and knowledge.

The gameplay is rather fun, especially on the highest level of difficulty. The AI is not bad at all, and it will combine diverse types of shots and make you work hard to win a point. At some point during a match, you will often discover an opponent's strength or weakness, which I really liked. You also must make sure of where you are standing on the court, especially when your opponent serves, otherwise they might win an easy point by performing an ace. The shots system is good and easy to use. What I was not a fan of is when you try to move your player to the net. It sometimes felt as though my player was unable to move forward with ease, which was quite frustrating at times. The other thing I didn’t like is the commentator voice-over, for a few reasons. The first is because it is so dull and monotone. I know tennis commentators are quiet, but if it really is as the game portrayed, I must say that I am glad I no longer watch tennis on the television! The second is that when you hit the second set, the commentator’s voice softens to the point that you cannot hear him.  Maybe it is done on purpose! Honestly, it is tragic. I do like the player animations and the slow motion is good too.

Graphically, the game looks great, and it is fun to play for a while. If you are a hardcore tennis fan, you probably will love the game but for the others it might be a bit thin. It’s a great sport, but it is tennis after all.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Matchpoint - Tennis Championships Steam Store Page