Perfect for Tennis fans and sports fans alike, ‘Matchpoint: Tennis Championships: Legends Edition’ brings the world’s tennis champions for you to play as and compete against at home. From publishers, Kalypso Media and developers Torus Games, which have previously developed the Praetorians HD remastered, ‘Beast Quest’ and ‘Hotel Transylvania 3’, now brings you Matchpoint: Tennis Championships. Bringing you a variety of players, current and retired, such as Tim Henman, Tommy Haas, Andrey Rublev, Heather Watson, and Nick Kyrgios are all well known Tennis champions in the tennis world in mixed doubles or singles.

The game offers players several game modes for single-player and multiplayer and the ability to play cross-platform, so you can play with friends on a console or PC. Also, you are given the ability to play with either a keyboard or controller. For the best game experience though, I recommend using a game controller on the PC as the game can be challenging at times when using a keyboard.

For single-player, the game offers quick play to challenge yourself against the several NPC players on offer and a Career mode, where you can create your own customizable character and make your way from the Auckland Open all the way to the Australian Grand Slam, as your career really opens up.

Unlocking and choosing better equipment will give you a better edge, and hiring coaches to help unlock abilities to help you focus on your skills like your backhand or your serves. All this will help you progress in your tennis career but practice makes perfect and jumping straight in may not always be the best move for first-time players.

I highly recommend playing the tutorial that only takes about 15 minutes to complete and helps to understand the game’s fundamentals and controls. Like I said before, best to use a controller as the keyboard as it can take time to get used to maneuvering. It is nice how you can choose different types of serves and choose where on the court you want to aim the ball. Tennis fans may really enjoy the detail the game takes in creating a genuine touch, rather than the usual arcade versions we are used to. I’ll admit, the last tennis game I played was Wii Tennis on console.

You will have the ability to play your career characters in the Quick Matches and Multiplayer too. I do enjoy the game’s commentary in the quick matches at the beginning adding a little footnote on the players that adds that bit of context and insight. The game Multiplayer is great to see who of your friends is a better tennis player, but also Multiplayer consists of ranked and casual matches that pit you against other players online with crossplay capable.

Being cross play means you can have it on console too, along with the ability to just play with friends in private matches. I like other little touches in the game, such as starting a quick match where you can choose how many sets, what surface you are playing on, whether you want to play on hard, grass or clay, and how many sets, which is a nice touch.

As for the game’s graphics and sounds, I really enjoyed the voice commentary during the matches and the details of the Tennis legends such as Andrey Rublev and then seeing what they look like in real life. The animation details are actually amazing and highly accurate. I would like to see that roster increased but that always depends on what the developers can get their hands on in the future.

Overall, Matchpoint: Tennis Championships – Legends Edition will keep tennis fans engaged much like the FIFA games entertain football fans of the same nature. Challenging yourself in Career mode then showing off your custom character to your friends in Multiplayer. I do have to admit I am not a huge tennis fan, and I did always manage to hit my ball out in most cases, but I did find myself educated, intrigued, and entertained. Someone like me, who now does know the difference between a backhand and a front hand serve, can enjoy themselves in this game. Imagine how a true tennis fan can go.

Matchpoint – Tennis Championships releases on July 7^th 2022 for PlayStation®4|5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and is coming on day one to console, PC, and cloud with Xbox Game Pass.

Written by: Simon Hayward