As any tennis fan/gamer can tell you, tennis games have come out in more of a trickle than a stream in the past years.  A while back, Sega Sports released the amazing Virtua Tennis, which not only managed to be both challenging and incredibly addicting, but also reinvented the tennis genre as its best entry to date.  Its sequel, Tennis 2k, was also an excellent title.  However, as of late, there haven’t really been any tennis games to hit the market.  Therefore, its quite refreshing that Oxygen Interactive is bringing a brand new tennis game to the table, Perfect Ace Pro Tournament Tennis.  Perfect Ace does manage to provide a really easy-to-grasp, occasionally enjoyable game of tennis, but the game does have some major flaws that prevent it from being as fun and engaging as Sega’s classic tennis games.

Perfect Ace features 32 playable characters each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses, although none of them are real tennis pros.  The game also boasts 16 different courts in 16 countries. 

The game modes are pretty basic: Singles, Doubles, Tournaments, and a Championship mode.  The only real difference between the Tournament mode and the Championship mode is that the Championship mode is an elimination tournament based on countries and the Tournament mode is an elimination tournament based on players.

The gameplay is very easy to get into.  The interface is easy to navigate, and the controls are easily mapped to a gamepad should you prefer to play the game that way.  However, the gameplay falls short in a few key areas.  First off, the in game controls.  Controlling your character can be a frustrating endeavor.  Often times, you’ll be trying to move your player towards the ball, and they’ll just stop in the middle of the court and let the ball fly right past them.  Other times, you’ll appear to be about to regularly hit the ball back towards your opponent when your character will do a lunging dive that knocks the ball out of bounds.  This happens more often than it really should, and makes the game pretty frustrating.

The AI is also another problem.  The computer-controlled opponents aren’t very smart, and often miss shots for no apparent reason.  You’ll return a shot, your opponent will begin to go for it, and then just grow lazy and stop halfway.  This almost kills any challenge in the game, since it’s tremendously easy to get a shot past your opponent.

The graphics are good, but not great.  The characters are realistically animated and move naturally, but the player models appear a bit disjointed and unpolished.  The courts look very nice and realistic, however.

The game’s sound is pretty barebones.  The interface music is upbeat, although is does sound like it was made with a cheap MIDI keyboard.  The sound effects are pretty standard, and the sound of the ball hitting the court floor doesn’t sound any different on clay than it does on turf.  Also, the commentary is pretty redundant.  The commentator is limited to saying “Great Shot!”, “Well Played!” or something to that effect.

Perfect Ace can be an easy to pick up tennis game, but more often than not it ends up a frustrating and unpolished experience.  Plus, there simply aren’t enough game modes to entice hardcore tennis fans for very long.  At best, Perfect Ace is worth picking up simply because its one of the only games of its kind on the PC, but don’t expect to be playing it for a long time. 

Gameplay: 6.5
Don’t expect to be wowed by the gameplay in Perfect Ace the same way you were when the first Virtua Tennis hit the scene.  The controls are unresponsive, the game modes are scant, and the AI is very stupid. 

Graphics: 6.9

The animations look pretty good and move realistically, but the character models look unnatural.  The courts look pretty nice, however.

 Sound: 6.5

The sound effects are pretty barebones, but they do their job.  The commentary is very simplistic, with the announcer blurting out things like “Well Played!” at inopportune times.

Difficulty: Easy 

Excluding the unresponsive controls, the game itself is extraordinarily easy, considering the very weak AI. 

Concept: 7.0
While it’s great to see new tennis game after so long, the gameplay doesn’t really carry through the way it should.     

Multiplayer: 6.5

The game features a two-player competitive singles mode, or a co-op doubles mode, but no online play.

Overall: 6.8
Perfect Ace is easy-to-grasp, but the frustrating controls, poor AI, and limited gameplay modes will likely turn away most gamers.