Current Events > Lol, the way people are defending the new (bad) Mario Tennis game is ridiculous.

(+) Yeah! (+)

So the game finally released and people are discovering it lacks most basic gameplay options you'd expect in a Mario Tennis game, or pretty much any multiplayer game going back to the N64.

i.e.
-You can't play full-length games
-You can't select what stage you want to play on
-You can't individually select the difficulty of CPU players
-Split screen is forced and the camera angle can't be changed

Etc etc etc...

Some of the solutions/apologies from fans I've seen are lolzy as fuck though. Notably, since you can't actually play a full-length tennis match (just short 2 game sets) someone literally told me it's you actually can play 6 game sets, you just need to play the 2 games over and over again, then resetting back to the menu, while keeping track of the score in your head, to simulate a full length tennis match lol.
(To demonstrate this point, this is basically like if Mario Kart tracks only had 1 lap, and someone suggested you can just play the same track 3 times in a row, and it's fine)

There's also people saying not being able to select your stage is a good thing because it makes the game go faster. And there's also the usual Nintendo Defense Squad defending the online being featureless and locking characters behind monthly online tournaments.

/blogfaqs, I know I know but I just couldn't resist.
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ForestLogic posted...

-You can't play full-length games
-You can't select what stage you want to play on
-You can't individually select the difficulty of CPU players
-Split screen is forced and the camera angle can't be changed

wait is this for real
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man it's amazing that Mario Tennis peaked on the GCN

that title was the shit, played it a ton
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Delirious_Beard posted...

ForestLogic posted...

-You can't play full-length games
-You can't select what stage you want to play on
-You can't individually select the difficulty of CPU players
-Split screen is forced and the camera angle can't be changed

wait is this for real

IIRC some of these things only apply to online play.
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That's unfortunate that the game is so flawed. My wife and I had some interest in it.
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The demo was great, sounds like the game is just not $60 great

Although if the lack of choice is just for online that's how MK8D already works
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Tyranthraxus posted...

Delirious_Beard posted...

ForestLogic posted...

-You can't play full-length games
-You can't select what stage you want to play on
-You can't individually select the difficulty of CPU players
-Split screen is forced and the camera angle can't be changed

wait is this for real

IIRC some of these things only apply to online play.

Unfortunately these all apply to local multiplayer too.

Full length games are impossible in the game. You can only select a Tiebreaker (first to 7 points) and a quick 2-game Set (which is technically first to 8 points), so they're not even that different from one another.
The closest you can get is in the tournament mode (which is singles only, no doubles) which at least lets you play 2 sets of 2 games, and the Story Mode too.

The lack of choosing stages though is universal though for the entire game. You can't manually pick a court to play on. Instead, it randomly selects from a pool of them and picks automatically. You CAN toggle on and off the stages it picks from, but at no point can you just say "I want this one."

CPU players are locked in at the same difficulty whether you're online or not, too. So in other words, you can only pick Expert for both CPU in doubles, as opposed to older games which let you pick, say for example, Expert for one CPU and Novice for another. This complaint isn't a big deal, but is more just another random removal of a long-standing feature.

The forced split-screen is a pain in the ass when playing multiplayer where you're not on the same doubles team. So if you're playing local multiplayer with more than 2 people, or if you and a friend are on separate doubles, it forces you to do this janky vertical split screen, instead of just letting them adjust to playing from the back, or manually changing the camera like in older games.

So yeah. Game's not great, lol. (And that's coming from me, a HUGE Mario Tennis fan)
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And the game looked so good from trailers and previews... :/

I was expecting something like Mario Power Tennis good, complete with a story mode instead of a tournament mode.
Especially after the super barebones disappointment that the Wii U game was.
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Here's the annoying part. The gameplay and the mechanics are awesome. Like, really fun, really great. The game is a blast to play.

BUT all the arbitrary restrictions make accessing that awesome gameplay really clunky and difficult.
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ForestLogic posted...

Here's the annoying part. The gameplay and the mechanics are awesome. Like, really fun, really great. The game is a blast to play.

BUT all the arbitrary restrictions make accessing that awesome gameplay really clunky and difficult.

I'm hoping that they'll be able to patch these issues out, at least. If the game itself is fun but has really bad design decisions that seems like something that could be fixed.

Look at Xenoblade 2. That game's release was pretty awful and had tons of issues, but the core game was still good. Jump to now and they've majorly patched it and even threw in some free new content outside of the season pass and it's actually pretty damn good now.
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