For two weeks every June, Britons everywhere go mad for a tournament that is synonymous with strawberries and cream, rain, and heartbreak.
Wimbledon is coming to close, and so developers are attempting to capitalise on the Championship's popularity.
Pro Tennis Volley is one such attempt, and although it’s polished, addictive fun, tennis doesn’t seem to be as receptive to the flick treatment as other sports
Fifteen love
For those who have played a flick sports game before, the concept of Pro Tennis Volley should be instantly familiar.
You control a racquet and must return tennis balls fired from machines onto various targets around the court. Hitting these targets is rewarded with points, the number of which is dependent on how close your shot is to the bullseye, and on your multiplier, which is increased by hitting consecutive targets.
You move the racquet by dragging it around the touchscreen and perform shots by swiping it upward. The angle, trajectory, and power of the shot can all be controlled.
Deuce
The aim of Three Life and Super Pro modes is to score as many points as possible before you exhaust your supply of three lives. Extra lives can be won during the game and are lost by missing the ball or hitting the ball out of play.
The crucial difference between these two modes is that in Super Pro you're also penalised for missing the target, meaning that attaining high scores is considerably more difficult.
Multi-ball mode plays like a Virtua Tennis mini-game. 50 balls are fired from three different machines and must be returned onto a moving target. Once again the aim is to set a high score, but fails are punished with a ten point deduction rather than the loss of a life.
Game, Set and Match
Graphically, the game is impressive, with sharp racquets and lush lawn courts making the most of the iPhone’s Retina display, while the slick purple and green Wimbledon-themed menus are a nice touch.
The game manages to back this style up with substance as it retains many of the addictive properties that have made similar sports titles so successful, and the addition of online leaderboards provides further incentive to beat your high score.
However, Pro Volley Tennis doesn’t feel the most accessible game of its type due to the steep learning curve and overall difficulty. The controls are functional and responsive, but can take a while to get used to, and the two main modes can get frustrating for casual players.
Whereas other sports can add new variables such as extra opponents, obstacles, or courses to ramp up the difficulty, this game is limited by how it can modify the challenge. It does this by making angles increasingly harder and taking longer to reveal target locations.
This is fantastic for those who want to be rewarded for consistency and concentration, but it reduces the game’s general and lasting appeal.
However, Pro Volley Tennis is still a competent flick sports title that’s a perfect timewaster during Wimbledon rain breaks (unless you’re on Centre Court with its fancy roof of course), but not really beyond that.