Mario Tennis Fever is out tomorrow (February 12) and according to early reviews, the sports game is an ace arcade multiplayer game with a questionable single-player campaign.
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The Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive features a roster of 38 characters from across the Mushroom Kingdom, and a number of ‘Fever Rackets’ which each have their own special abilities.
Mario Tennis Fever includes a single-player campaign ‘Adventure’ mode as well as multiplayer ‘Tournament’, ‘Trial Towers’ and ‘Free Play’ modes. Players can also play matches online.
The game currently has a “generally favourable” review score of 77 per cent on aggregate site Metacritic, based on 70 early reviews.
Nintendo Insider called it “the best sports entry we’ve had from the plumber since his GameCube days” in their glowing 9/10 review. “As chaotic as Mario Kart, it stands alongside the likes of Mario Golf Toadstool Tour and Mario Strikers Charged as the best Mario sports games. It’s completely thrilling,” wrote Dexerto.
GamesRadar+ criticised the “shockingly charmless” single-player campaign mode. “It’s a plodding and humourless text-based story that’s punctuated by bizarrely lacklustre tennis action,” they wrote while praising the “riotous, hilarious, chaotic fun” of multiplayer.
“Predictably, Mario Tennis Fever is the most fun when you’re playing with a few friends [but] it’s tough to recommend to solo players, as Fever’s bland, uninspired Adventure mode is more of an extended tutorial than an actual adventure,” reads IGN’s review.
‘Mario Tennis Fever’. CREDIT: Nintendo
“Mario Tennis Fever is another solid enough sports game from Camelot, but a disappointingly short single-player offering and a real risk of imbalance – whether using Fever Rackets or not – means what could have been fantastic will have to settle for simply being good,” wrote VGC in their 3 star review.
“Seems like the make or break for this game for people will be online play, which the reviewers didn’t have access to,” wrote one fan. “I really don’t get why they can’t just add a little RPG adventure mode like the GameBoy golf and tennis games had,” added another.
Last month, subscribers to Goggle’s new AI tool Project Gemini created Mario knock-offs before the prompt was banned due to “interests of third-party content providers.”
In other news, Isabela Merced will lead the live-action adaptation of The House Of The Dead from Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson.
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