Mario Tennis Fever - Switch 2 Review

Mario is good at so many sports. It's almost unfair. Tennis was added to his repertoire in the Nintendo 64 days (or Virtual Boy if you want to get technical about it), and since then, we’ve had an entry in the Mario Tennis series on almost every Nintendo console, with new gimmicks and an ever-growing roster of Mushroom Kingdom denizens each time. The newest entry has arrived in the form of Mario Tennis Fever, serving some high-octane tennis action for the Nintendo Switch 2. So is it a smash or an unsightly double fault?

The Good

The big innovation for Mario Tennis Fever is the introduction of fever rackets – rackets that grant the ability to play a special shot particular to that racket. The variety of the rackets/powers on offer – from fireball shots to filling your opponents' court with tornadoes – is impressive, and their impact substantial. By adding obstacles in court and even changing the playing surface, you’ll be winning points and also reducing your opponents' HP (you can knock them out of a point for a few seconds when you do). Bottom line – the rackets lead to glorious chaos, and even some fun strategy (particularly when pairing them with the vast character roster and their varying attributes)

The level of thought and imagination put into these new rackets is emblematic of the level of love and care that has gone into the ‘Mario-ification’ of the game of tennis. The game looks great, sounds great, and is full of neat nods to the wider (Super) Mario World. This is most apparent in the adventure mode, which is the single-player ‘story mode’ where all problems are solved by playing tennis. There’s a full narrative, cutscenes, world maps, hub areas, a ton of writing and dialogue, and generally things that didn’t have to be there.

Even more importantly, there are a plethora of ways on offer to play, in both single player and multiplayer – from simple tournaments to bizarre minigames and special rules matches, all singles and doubles and 1-4 players. The frantic fun of Mario Tennis Fever does feel geared towards multiplayer sessions, online and on-couch. The online functionality is also solid, as has thankfully started to become standard from Nintendo’s first-party games. Ranked modes, private rooms and the options for fever racket or non-fever racket gameplay are all available.

TL;DR

• New fever rackets open up some chaotically fun gameplay
• Plenty of gameplay options and catering to multiplayer and online
• Full of Nintendo charm and attention to detail

The Bad

The secret sauce of the best Mario Sports games is that when you dig underneath all the characters, minigames and special moves, you find the core mechanics of really good sports games. The predecessor to Mario Tennis Fever, Mario Tennis Aces, excelled in this area, with many players losing hours to the competitive online world, particularly the ‘non-special powered’ game, which required some legit skills. Unfortunately for tennis fans, Mario Tennis Fever leans more towards the basic/arcadey side – the courts are smaller, the ball is slower, and the players reach further. All this is likely to accommodate all the new racket powers, but it does mean it feels a lot less ‘tennis-y’. 

That doesn't mean it's not a challenging game when it needs to be; particularly when you're playing online, it’s just a little more button mashing and blasting through opponents, rather than tactics and placement

I’ve already covered the adventure mode a bit in the ‘Good’ section of this review, but it certainly also belongs here. The first part of the adventure mode amounts to a very basic tutorial, and it takes way, way too long to get through, with too much pointless running back and forth doing basic minigames and challenges. It is frankly egregious in how slow it feels, and will likely cause people to stop before it gets good, dooming Mario Tennis Fever’s adventure mode to only be known for being the reason we have baby Wario as a canon character…

TL;DR

• Core tennis mechanics will be too simplified for some
• Single-player adventure mode takes too long to become fun

Final Score: 8/10

Mario Tennis Fever leans into chaotic, wacky multiplayer action rather than the core tennis gameplay its predecessors majored in. Is this a great Mario Sports game? Yes. Is this a great tennis game? Not really. But that's ok, as it’s still a good time in single player and, more importantly, long-term, online.

Thank you for checking out our Mario Tennis Fever Switch review, thank you to Nintendo AU/NZ for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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