Mario Tennis Aces

Aces delivers as a competent arcade tennis game, and the new mechanics are fun and important enough that I would be surprised to see them removed in a future Mario Tennis. The difficulty spikes in the campaign are frustrating, but not impossible to overcome. Leveling Mario even as you fail makes the losses sting less (though I would have killed for a quick retry option) and I was always eager to see what I would be doing next.

The game suffers from a few oversights like the inability to set the number of sets in a match or directly choose a court. Having the ability to change from a split screen to a shared screen in single-console multiplayer would have been nice too. Other than that, Mario Tennis Aces looks and sounds great, and is something any Mario Tennis fan will enjoy.

Nintendo continues to pump out good looking games on its console. Mario Tennis Aces is sharp and colorful. It runs fantastically and the variety of characters and course look stunning in HD. The overall presentation just looks and feels clean, which is a staple of a Nintendo-developed title. It can never be overstated how good the design team really is.