xbox live indie game reviews

The best thing about A Game of Tennis is the menu. At first glance, it looks like some sort of trippy modern art display. If you focus a little more closely, it's actually a bunch of automated games of Pong--wait, sorry, "A Game of Tennis"--overlapping each other. The game does have a few bells and whistles which Aaron's Ping-Pong doesn't have--"advanced mode," networked multiplayer and online leaderboards. The problem with a really lame game having networked multiplayer is that I wasn't able to convince any of my friends to buy it so I could test it out.

Unlike Aaron's Ping-Pong, though, this game does have an "advanced" game mode. I was pretty optimistic that the developer who programmed this game (I don't say designer because the gamew as designed over 30 years ago) had actually put some thought into doing something different with the game, so after vetting that the "retro" mode was, indeed, exactly like Pong I eagerly jumped into the advanced mode.

The advanced mode is identical to classic Pong. Only the retarded computer has infinite lives. You can set how many lives you have (though only the games with 5 lives count as "ranked," leaderboard-enabled games). Otherwise, it's about as exciting as watching paint dry. Games like this make me wish for that Microsoft will follow through on its promise to de-list games which are horrible at converting downloads into sales (and--by extension--horrible games). This one is definitely not worth the points.