by: John Olin

August 01, 2005

Throughout the years Xbox fans have had the opportunity to play the Outlaw series courtesy of develop Hypnotix. These titles have been in golf and volleyball genres, both genres they tried weren’t all that bad. Now the developers try to challenge games such as Top Spin in the genre of tennis. If you would like me to save you some reading, unless you want a tennis title with a thin, crackly coat of extreme sports rubbed on the top, and the cohesiveness removed then stop right now, otherwise continue reading.

The game has many different modes, Tour being the main one will allow you to progress with the selected character to their different tours. You can choose veteran, pro, or amateur. Each person has their own set of tours and after awhile you will start unlocking other characters, tours, accessories, and clothing. One thing I noticed about the difficulty of the AI is even on amateur it can seem like it is using a lot of cheap tricks and being unfair, although it isn’t impossible to beat. Another fairly annoying thing about the title is at any given time the ball will slow down, and then go at blistering speeds. It isn’t the framerate stuttering either because everything else seems to be in full swing. There is also a system in which when pressing Y before someone serves you can fight that person. Basically if you win the fight you can get certain abilities or terms in your favor for a selected period of time. The way you do it is questionable though, because all it consists of is pushing the buttons as fast as you can and hope you strike first.

There is also an exhibition mode that has many different game types. One of them Hot Potato, has you serving the ball to each other until eventually the time runs out and the ball explodes on the player making them the loser. It can definitely be frustrating but can also be tons of fun against another human player. There are many other modes as well such as Casino, Baseball, Football, Pinball, and Ping Pong. You may have one of these modes while doing the Tour which will add a bit more variety to it. There is of course support for up to four people for a doubles game, or play over Xbox Live. Either way playing with other people rather than playing the computer is definitely a lot better in most cases, or content download in the future will give “Outlaw” fans something to look forward to.

Drills are a series of minigames that help you sharpen your skills and rack yup points to put to selected characters. One minigame has you dodging laser balls from a robot and hitting the tennis balls it shoots out every so often back at it, so that it can take damage. Another has you trying to hit a bunch of butchers as they run around on the opposite side of the court before time runs out. Another is a game racing the clock where you must hit the ball on specific tile parts on the other side to reveal an image of one of the Outlaw vixens posing. The purpose of the drills is depending on who you are doing them with, it will give you a set amount of points in which you can divide them amongst attributes such as speed, endurance, accuracy, power, and control. One thing it won’t really do is hone your skills; it will for the most part just help you learn the timings of these minigames. Another thing suspiciously absent from the game is any sort of tutorial games that will help newcomers of tennis games to get the hang of every single part of the game.

The biggest disappointment in the game would definitely have to be the arbitrary controls. At its core they are pretty easy. The A, B, X, and Y buttons lets you do a variety of different hits. You serve by pressing A, and then pressing A again trying to get it to a certain hit percentage to get the ball over the net. It takes some getting used to but it is simple enough. Then you have the left trigger which is “extreme” aspect of the control. Holding it in while serving a ball at 100% will allow you to do an ultra fast and powerful shot that send the ball shooting over the net engulfed in flames. If you hold down the R trigger while in the game you will begin to see your own character catch on fire but only to go in turbo-charged mode. The whole bad part about the controls is just how unresponsive they are. You might hit a button for a certain kind of shot, but get the other instead. You could try and hit the ball, but for whatever reason your character goes charging in the opposite direction despite you not pressing in that direction. The most frustrating though is the fact that you can only direct the ball to go to a certain part of the course on the opposite side half the time. Now I have played my fair share of tennis titles from Mario Golf, Virtua Tennis, and of course Top Spin. Any troubles I have had with these title’s controls where not near as horrible as Outlaw Tennis.