Pro Tennis 2013
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| Pro Tennis 2013

If you get the controls right in your tennis game, then it's highly likely you're going to end up with an end product that's at the very least consistently enjoyable. Pro Tennis 2013 is a fine example of what happens when you don't.

Its controls are a little too fiddly and a little too imprecise, often leaving you sprinting off screen when you wanted to thwack a ball into the corner of the court. And that's a real shame, because there's an awful lot of promise here.

Second service

The game is a simple one-on-one tennis simulator that lets you play around with a few different options and try to lead your little tennis man up the world rankings. There's nothing innovative about it, but it's presented nicely and feels like you'd imagine a tennis game should.

Your tennis player is always at the bottom of the screen, thwacking balls back up to a contender at the top. You move around the court using all of the number on your keypad except '5', which you use to time your returns.

Hitting the ball back to your opponent is never that difficult -you just need to make sure you're in the right place at the right time. It's when you start trying to change the angle of your return that things go wrong.

You move the ball around in the air by tapping a direction when you're mid-return, but the game is never quite sure at what point you should be doing this. The tutorial is little help, and sometimes you'll just run away like a frightened child when the ball comes anywhere near you.

Out

Eventually you'll get the hang of the timing, although it's still an uncomfortable experience, and on the harder difficulty levels you're likely to cripple your fingers within a few minutes of play.

A kinder system, that gave more leeway for moving the ball after a strike would work much better, and leave you with less mangled digits.

Unfortunately, though, you're stuck with fiddly, difficult controls, and it ruins what should be an engaging experience.

If you're desperate for more tennis on your mobile, and you're willing to put in the hours of finger agony needed to perfect the controls, then Pro Tennis 2013 might be worth it, otherwise it's best avoided.

Pro Tennis 2013

A decent game hobbled by its poor controls, Pro Tennis 2013 is one for extreme tennis fans only
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.