Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is a bare-bones, lackluster addition to Mario's sporting adventures.
The Mario Tennis you know and love, only substantially less of it than usual. Still fun, but such slim pickings leave a sour taste.
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is a barebones installment of a beloved franchise on Wii U that leaves gamers with very little to do outside of a few traditional game modes.
The core gameplay of Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is enjoyable, but disappointing side modes, online restrictions and gimmicky power-ups make this return go a little wide of the mark.
There is a great straightforward tennis game here, but little else to hook you in and keep you coming back
After more than a decade of handheld titles and digital re-releases, Mario Tennis finally returns to consoles with Mega Mushrooms, online multiplayer, and a disappointing lack of content.
It's shocking how little content there is in Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash. As much as we'd love to explore the title further, the rabbit hole doesn't go any deeper.
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is an odd game to score or recommend. The basic gameplay is strong, has slick performance and handsome if basic visuals; as a multiplayer game it can be enormously enjoyable, too. With options to ignore newfound gimmicks in simple matches included, fans of the franchise that want a HD / 60fps entry to play with friends - or some random opponents online - can find entertainment. Those are positives, but we cannot emphasize enough how phoned-in and thin the content offering is, nor how throwaway Mega Battle is as a tentpole feature. Frankly this shouldn't be a retail game at $49.99 and regional equivalents, as it is at launch; it should be a budget retail game at best.
