Also thrown into the mix are "power" moves and taunts that are designed to help you beat your opponent by distracting them and bending the laws of physics to your advantage. Taunts cause your opponents screen and controller to shake, hopefully distracting them so that you will score a point. These can only be done once every so often since they must recharge. The power moves can be done either as a power serve or power shots and they vary by what character you use. They can range from teleporting the ball around the table at random, causing it to zigzag around or even flying at your opponent rapidly while on fire. These moves are recharged by volleying the ball back and forth with your opponent.

While all of this sounds vaguely interesting, especially in a bargain-priced game, it doesn't play out very well since this game is plagued by a number of problems.

First of all the controls, while standard for the Wii, stink. For some reason they aren't very responsive and there is a tendency for the game to not register moves. Many times I would be moving the controller in an attempt to finish off a volley only to have my paddle remain motionless. If not for this then the controls would be competent and fairly easy to learn and use.

So long as you play the game exclusively multiplayer then you will probably enjoy it. Playing with a friend lets you avoid this game's greatest flaw: the AI. It is nearly impossible to get balls past them most of the time but then others they will just stand there and let you score. Worse than this is the fact that your power shots and taunts do little, usually nothing, to the computer controlled players but they sure work on you. The fact that you can burn through four special attacks trying to get a shot past them only to get grounded when they return fire in one shot is really agitating. But then all of a sudden one spin shot later and they just watch it go by... ugh. The worst.

The only things worse than the gameplay here are the graphics and audio. All of the characters look bland and nothing like their real-life counterparts. The only one even remotely close is the Hammer who kind of sort of looks like they might have tried to make him look like Patton Oswalt but the rest are pretty bad, even Feng. The backgrounds are boring and devoid of life even when you are in an arena.

Possibly the only thing more obnoxious than the graphics are the sound effects. There is little sound in this game except for the bouncing sounds of the ball on the table. Other than that all you get is some piddling music that you really could do without and the obnoxious repeated taunts. Nothing really throws you off like complete silence with only annoying vocals such as "Tell your mom to pull the car around." and other such "memorable" lines that I could have done without.

With a few unlockable characters to its name that you can get in about two hours of play there is little to really keep you entertained here. Keeping in mind the fact that you could get this same sort of gameplay out of Wii Sports tennis then there is no reason to waste time with this one. It isn't funny, even though the movie got some chuckles from me, and the bland sound and atrocious graphics seal the fate of this game. Even a rental is too good for this.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 15%. Nothing this game has to offer is all that special besides some spastic AI and horrendous graphics.

« Page 1