Tennis In The Face review for PS4

For a developer that basically has zero originality, 10tons make some pretty enjoyable games. King Oddball, Sparkle, Sparkle 2: they may borrow (to put it charitably) ideas from other, more popular games, but they’re easily some of the most enjoyable that I’ve played this year.

As you’ve probably guessed, you can add Tennis in the Face to that list. Like those games, its premise is simple. It’s a physics-based casual game where you fire projectiles — in this case tennis balls, along with the odd explosive — at various enemies scattered throughout levels. And that’s it. There are different types of enemies, and occasionally slightly different environmental hazards that you need to plan around, but essentially, once you’ve played one level, you’ve gotten a pretty complete idea of what’s in store for the next hundred or so levels.

In other words, it’s Angry Birds with tennis balls. But just like Rovio’s money-maker, Tennis in the Face is super-addictive. There’s just enough change and just enough incremental increases in difficulty from level to level that you feel compelled to keep going — and, of course, the drive to beat your high score (both locally and on the leaderboards) doesn’t hurt either.

Obviously, you need to dock a few points from Tennis in the Face for not coming up with a unique idea so much as it simply adds a bit of a twist to an already wildly popular franchise. But I don’t want to take away too much from it — partly because that twist (where the enemies are clowns, business people, cops and others trying to get their Explodz energy drink) is cutely funny, and partly because, whatever it may be lacking in originality, it’s still really fun.

And honestly, that’s all I care about. Tennis in the Face may not push the PS4 to its limits (I doubt the eventual Vita version will even do that either), but it’s still a lot more enjoyable than any number of other more complex games — and quite frankly, I’ll take enjoyable over complex any day of the week.