Matchpoint – Tennis Championships review for PS5/4, Xbox Series X/One

On some level, I understand why someone would want to play Matchpoint – Tennis Championships. It?s pretty barebones, where the only way to get any kind of lasting value out of the game is to play through a career mode which consists of tournaments and little else. As someone who has sunk hundreds ? if not thousands ? of hours into the career mode in MLB The Show, where pretty much all there is to do is play game after game after game, I get the appeal of a game where you focus solely on advancing your created player through their career without any off-field (or off-court, in this case) distractions.

But just like my obsession with Road to the Show has generally been fuelled by a love for baseball, enjoying Matchpoint – Tennis Championships requires that you love tennis. Like, really, really love it, to the point you don?t have much interest in doing anything else.

Because there?s certainly not much else to do here. There?s a tutorial to start the game, then your options are quick matches or practicing, neither of which offer anything you can?t find in career mode, or you embark on your career.

What?s more, even the career mode isn?t that interesting. You just play an endless series of exhibition matches and tournaments, with the sole goal of moving up the rankings. Your opponents are all faceless and interchangeable. In theory, the game mixes things up with your opponents by giving them each traits that only get revealed during a game (i.e. some players choke on set points, others get stronger in rallies), but in practice they all seemed pretty much the same. The same goes for the courts on which you play ? the game may say you?re taking part in tournaments around the world, but the courts (not to mention the people sitting courtside) all look awfully similar.

Matchpoint – Tennis Championships one saving grace is that the on-court action is pretty solid. It?s very easy to turn your player into a world-beating pro, one who can make shots spin and drop from pretty much anywhere on the court. Controlling your player is a breeze, and it?s very easy to pick up all you need to know in just a few minutes.

So, again: Matchpoint – Tennis Championships is great if you want tennis, and nothing but tennis. It?ll give you ample opportunity to play match after match, and it never bogs you down in the extraneous nonsense that seems to plague most sports games. But if you want to do literally anything more than that, you might find your attention wavers long before you come close to finishing your career.

Kalypso provided us with a Matchpoint – Tennis Championships PS4/5 code for review purposes.