by: John Olin

August 01, 2005

Visually the title is a mixed bag. The characters are modeled pretty nice, and look very crisp and smooth. The characters that have returned from the previous Outlaw titles haven’t changed a whole lot, and you can still play dress up with them. Half the time I can’t get past the part where you are dressing up Barbie..er I mean a woman character. With all joking aside though, the animations on the characters are pretty limited, and are used for the entire lot. Besides that, there is a bit of a strange transition from when they stretch to get a ball far from them, from going back to their normal stance. There are sixteen stereotypical characters in all, with four for you to use in the beginning with the rest to unlock as you progress through the game. There are some new comers to the game as well, such as a Ninja and a character that looks suspiciously like “Mortal Kombat’s”, Sub Zero. There are twelve courts all with their own theme, from NYC, Mexico, Hell, a military base, out in the tundra and more. The main difference between these levels though isn’t really anything that could adversely affect your game or make it more “extreme” when it comes to playing the game, but rather the courts are a different color, along with different buildings or surroundings in the background.

The game supports Dolby Digital, and it helps you get the more stadium feel of a tennis court. Seven Colbert of Daily Show, and to a lesser extent Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law fame, comes back to do commentary for this Outlaw game after “Outlaw Golf 2” substituted him for Comedy Central’s even more funny Dave Atell. The commentary is pretty good, sounds really sincere, and doesn’t get repetitive. The drawback is that it is only funny on occasion. The same could be said for the actual characters in the game, they all have there own bunch of lines that shamelessly mimic the stereotype they are supposed to be, but you would have to be twelve years old to actually think it was funny. The actual sounds while playing the game are your basic hits of the ball, and grunts from the players as they stride to strike the fuzzy green projectile. The soundtrack is a pretty big hit or miss with many of them sounding a lot a like. Most people won’t even recognize any of the artists who contributed music that was apparently supplied by MTV Games. This can be remedied easily however, simply by selecting your own custom soundtrack.

Outlaw Golf Tennis proves that you can go too far with the mismatching of “extreme” and sports game genres that aren’t normally traversed by many developers. The developers, Hypnotix did pretty well with Golf and even Volleyball to a certain extent, but for whatever reasons fell short with the tennis genre. It might have something to do with the company being bought out by Electronic Arts conveniently before this title was even released but what do I know?

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Golf and extreme stereotypes don’t always make the best of games, and while the previous Outlaw titles proved that it could be a pretty good match, this one still had a lot to be desired. Unless you are a fan of both golf/pong, and the Outlaw games which is doubtful, this probably isn’t for you. Even if you are, despite the games dirt-cheap $20 price tag you might want to rent before you buy.

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