I’ll probably burn in hell for saying this, being that Australia is a nation that loves it’s sports, but many sporting activities are really, really boring to watch. If there’s no physical contact between players, it becomes simply a matter of skill, and quite frankly I get bored of watching people hit little balls around. Golf, Cricket and Tennis are the main culprits of interminable drudgery, taking up hours if not days of valuable TV screen retail space that could be better served by showing re-runs of The Simpsons.

This is why ‘extreme’ sports developed – people were bored of watching pros do nothing to make millions, so they started extreme sports where people could get hurt or killed… now that’s entertainment! The Outlaw series of games’ goal is to take these dull sports and catapult them into the extreme. Outlaw Tennis’s focus is of the very noble pursuit of tennis, a sport of skill, concentration and endurance, which of course is boring as hell. It has some wacky scoring procedure that makes a joke of mathematics, an Umpire who is raised above the action like a demigod, and the crowd aren’t even allowed to cheer or shout out during the game!

Whilst tennis has had it’s colourful characters, from the tantrums of John McEnroe to the grunting of Maria Sharapova (who’s grunts are about the same volume as small aircraft landing), nothing matches the Outlaw series of misfits. A stripper, an ex-con, a dominatrix and a Spaniard of dubious sexual orientation are available at the start of the game, and a further 12 are unlocked as you play the game, including a ninja, a white boy rapper, and a disco diva. These colourful characters each have similar skills at the beginning of the game that can be upgraded during drills – essentially mini games where you’ve got to beat a number of objectives, not unlike training in Top Spin (XBW: 90) – and each unlocked new character has better skills again.

But far more interesting than the characters are the available match modes. Tour Mode takes up the bulk of the game, which take each character though 5 games then the finals. The four starting players begin with a usual game of tennis with the usual game rules. This plays much like Top Spin, with a few differences. The A button is a flat shot, the B button is Top Spin, X button is slice / drop shot, and Y is lob. Holding the left trigger gives extra spin to the top spin and slice, and the Right Trigger gives you a boost when serving, returning or running for the ball. Serving is done using a power meter – you hold A, X or Y and release it when you get the meter full. The meter rises and falls, so holding the button too long will result in a bad serve. Holding the Right Trigger gives a power serve, but you need to get exactly 100 on the meter to pull one off.

Like the other Outlaw series, the “star” of the game is the humour and the fighting. I was hoping for a simple fighting mechanism like in NHL Rivals (XBW: 84), but unfortunately the fighting is simply button mashing. The upside of fighting is it gives you unlimited turbo for 30 seconds, which becomes very handy. The humour in the game is quite childish and grows tired rather quickly. Admittedly some of the stuff is funny at first, but when you hear the commentator say, “that serve was bad like this hotdog, is that a toe nail?” for the 10th time, it loses it charm. The reactions to points won or lost are also funny at first, but it cheekily alters the script on a few of the animations, so for one animation there may be up to 4 scripts. However, even with this variance, it still gets old quickly.

In the second game of the Tour of the default characters, the match modes become available, and these offer interesting variations to the usual rules of Tennis. Hot Potato takes standard tennis rules, but puts a countdown timer on the ball, blowing up when striking zero, taking out whoever has the ball on their side of the court. It becomes a game of strategy and timing, returning the ball to the other side as quickly as possible. Casino adds money to a cash pool each time the ball is hit, and each point won gives you the pool. Standard tennis rules apply, but the winner is the person who has the most money at the end of the match. Even though you can win the match, there is a chance you might not have a great deal of money, and lose. Pinball places bumpers on the court, and hitting these bumpers gives a score. You have a number of turns; only get score points when serving, and lose score points when you lose a game point. At the end of the turns, the person with the most points wins. It sounds complicated, but it’s not when in action, and is quite fun as the goal is to force long rallies rather than beat the other player.

Then there are the sports rules. These are the rules of Ping Pong, Baseball, American Football applied to Tennis. There’s Ping Pong, which takes the scoring of ping-pong – one point equals one point, and it’s the first to 11 to win. Baseball relies on long rallies too, as the more the ball is hit over the net, the more bases you get, to a maximum of 3. Aces count as home runs, so if you have 3 bases full, and get an ace, you will score 4 points. Losing a point is an ‘out’; 3 outs and you switch servers. There are a number of innings, and the person with the most points at the end of the innings wins. Football uses gridiron rules – the server has the ball, and has to get it to the other end of the field to score. There’s four quarters of a minute each, and scoring points increases the yardage, with the longer the rally the more yards gained. An ace counts as a 35 yard sprint. Losing a point is a turnover, and the winner is the person with the most touchdowns at the end of the four quarters.

As if this wasn’t interesting enough, there are a variety of options that can be applied to the matches. These include timebombs that are placed wherever a point is won, and blow up knocking the opponent on his or her ass. This usually results in you winning a point, but not always. There’s a match timer which counts down whenever the ball is in play, and the person with the most points when it gets to zero wins, whilst the team match timer counts down whenever it’s your return, and stops when you’re in control of the ball. Then there’s the Blocker, which moves along the net, and hitting the blocker means you lose the point in whatever game mode you are playing. Hot Potato with a blocker becomes an incredibly tense battle of timing and wits!

Graphically the game is ok, but offers nothing too exciting. The courts are quite interesting from the usual tennis game fare, being set in a drug runner’s mansion, in Antarctica, in an old castle, even in Hell! Each character is well animated both in game and during the reaction scenes, and there’s a variety of clothing that can be unlocked for each character. The sound is the usual thwock of balls, the inane commentary, but surprisingly good soundtrack. Some of the rock tunes will have you headbanging along, whilst the drum and bass style tunes could be played in clubs to an appreciative crowd. Of course, there’s always the option to use your own playlists too.

The many variations make for exciting and challenging play, and there can be some epic battles in single, doubles and online play. However, these battles are often let down by cheating AI. Unless you max out your scores via the drills the game seems unfairly to the favour the AI. They always seem to return aces and powershots, and always seem to be able to make a comeback. Even on Amateur, the easiest setting, I found the games to become exercises in controller throwing frustration. Online play is also reasonable, but there are some parts when the game lags badly, especially on serve returns. But like most xbox games, the set up is easy, and being able to play online doubles is cool. In the single player game you can play Canadian doubles – 2 against one – and this would have been really cool over live, but you can only play against another two people on a console.

Conclusion:
Outlaw Tennis offers enough variety to keep most players busy for quite some time, but it suffers from cheating AI and annoying humour. Fortunately the humour can be cut out of the game in the options menu, but this removes the whole Outlaw aspect, and just gives you ‘Tennis With A Bit More Variety Than Usual’, which isn’t a very catchy game title. Online play extends the title, but finding players can be a little tricky.

Pros:
Fantastic additions to the normal rules of tennis.
Wide variety of gameplay options for both single and online play
Lots of unlockable characters, clothes, songs and courts
Nice soundtrack with a range of genres.

Cons:
Humour gets old really quickly
The AI seems to cheat, especially against the default characters
Online play can get a little laggy
Not many online players

77/100