Ah “Milkstone”, how I heart thee. I have reviewed dozens of your games by now. You do a lot of things really well, and release surprisingly few sequels in relation to your total output. “Avatar Tennis!” is an excellent addition to your pantheon.
I first discovered tennis video gaming in the ’70s with a Pong-clone (a box that we hooked up to the TV and it played a Pong-like game and… that’s it). My interest in it stayed dormant until the year 2000 when I got Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast. Top Spin for the Xbox furthered my interest.
This takes up where those games left off. It’s Pong in 3D, but with the ability to use your avatar (a touch I increasingly like now that there are avatar-based games that are, you know, actually *good*), and the ability to select from a bunch of different rackets. Oddly, that’s a feature I don’t recall seeing in any of tennis games I’ve played before, despite it being a natural thing to include. A neat touch is that some of those rackets are only unlockable by having other “Milkstone” games on your hard drive (I’m not sure if it has to be a purchased copy, or the trial is enough, but it’s a cool idea either way).
Controls are slickly smooth, it supports local multiplayer, it has a wide variety of extremely well rendered locations, and it all costs $1. Unmissable if you liked any of the games mentioned in this article, or want to try something like this for the first time.
Here’s what the developer (Milkstone Studios SL) has to say about the game:
“Game, Set & Match! Experience the most spectacular matches with Avatar Tennis! Train your skills, unlock over 50 rackets and get to the top rankings in the complete Career Mode, and take part in exciting local games of up to 4 players.”
Writings of Mass Deduction 