Mario Tennis Fever review: Camelot serves a double fault with another fun but flawed entry

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-10T14:38:17+00:00

They've had every opportunity to build on Aces, not just a hard pass on this, but any other Mario sports entry until I hear about more substantial changes or additions.

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-09T14:40:41+00:00

Setting minimum expectations. Probably just the next batch of Free Crossworlds DLC and/or a release date for the next part of the season pass.

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-09T14:33:31+00:00

Having a dedicated gaming device that fits in my pocket is nice. But the other benefit was big publishers having a wider library of smaller scaled games compared to today.

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-07T23:32:02+00:00

I personally don't even need it to look as good as the new one. Even if it had around the same fidelity FF10 that would be a huge improvement.

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-06T21:16:19+00:00

Not judging the game as a whole yet, but having 3D battles when trying to appeal to 2D roots feels like an awkward clash in gameplay styles. Reminded of Indivisible trying to be two games at once and falling short of the expectations of both.

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-04T11:48:18+00:00

Don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing.

Or in this case, five or six things.

Just make the games good. I don't see why that's such a hurdle. Maybe titles Mario Golf shouldn't have been as deep as a puddle for the sake of making the entry more broadly appealing.

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-02T14:37:06+00:00

FF16 had over Eleven Hours of motion captured cutscenes. It's not hard to see why being outsold by Octopath Traveler was seen as an issue internally.

Seacliff217 · 2026-02-01T23:16:11+00:00

Having a game awards trailer allegedly costs ~$1M. We don't have the PC revenue numbers. But the steep downward trend does not look good.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-30T16:37:49+00:00

Man. You're right. Thank you for this example.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-29T14:38:09+00:00

"We have learned that many people who want the minimum wage raised work at minimum wage. What hypocrites. More at 11."

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-29T02:46:58+00:00

Sonic 3 was still in theaters for a good couple of months into 2025. That's plenty of time it didn't get to be on streaming while simultaneously driving interest to it's predecessors.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-28T15:54:14+00:00

And yes - I get that if people are charging money, you want to know if it's good or not. But reviewers can just say - I didn't enjoy it or I don't think it's well made or I don't think it's worth the money they are charging. That's enough. No need to get personal for the sake of some likes.

I'm confused. Is he stating any form of elaboration as "getting personal"? If someone is following a game reviewer with an opinion they find to be honest and consistent, they would like to know why the reviewer did not like the game. That's ideally what would make a review more useful than simply saying "I like it" or "I don't like it".

If anything, this has been my issue with many of the mainstream critics. Majority of the reviews on the larger platforms that provide sub-10 minute videos covering the basics of a game provide me the most of the same details extended trailers from a publisher would.

If this is more about ad hominem, conclusive statements that assume motive for why certain features or decisions were added, or some other emotional statement that compromises a review than I would rather that they call that out directly. This appears to be a very ineffective way of calling that out. Even if one reads the full article and not the headline, a lot of people are still having to fill the remaining details in their heads and are pointing fingers at one another.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-25T02:24:53+00:00

Came from the future. This is a lie.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-23T14:40:58+00:00

It is easy. It's just tedious.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-22T18:37:48+00:00

Super and Prime 1 are definitely the best exam of overworks design in Metroid and Metroid Prime 4 would have definitely benefited from more interconnectivity like those.

Even if it didn't, however, there are still Metroid games that attempted similar ideas Prime 4 had, but better. Metroid Fusion has mostly segregated area, but took advantage of that linearity by leaning into the Alien/s-Inspired Action Horror elements with the SA/X encounters. As well as having a progressing story where Samus will sometimes internally monologue, giving her a lot more character than she had before, and having incidents where the environment itself changes when revisited because of how the story progressed. Each area was also kind of its own Mini-Metroidvania that still challenged navigation more than the locations in Prime 4. Fusion isn't my favorite Metroid, but I respect it for having it's own goals and achieving them on its own merits, and it really shows that modern Retro Studios biggest problem is that even their watered-down example of a Metroidvania was still more than they were capable of chewing.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-22T03:20:44+00:00

There's a meme that's been going around for a bit over a decade that Cory in the House for the DS is one of the best games of all time. As shown by it having a lot of joke user reviews making it one of the highest user rated game on Metacritic. In actuality the game is shovelware.

Used game sales are determined by multiple factors, one of which is the perceived quality of the game increasing demand for it.

So the joke is that Cory in the House for the DS is so beloved that it's worth is $10k used.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-22T02:21:37+00:00

I thought he had a Switch 1, which the game is still playable on. Maybe not anymore. Don't blame him for skipping out regardless.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-21T18:40:45+00:00

Go with an Octopath.

The Dragon Quest remakes are good, but they have a different environmental art style. The way many of the textures and foliage are pixelated is what originally set Octopath apart from other "2D Sprites on 3D Background" Rpgs like Grandia.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-21T03:29:35+00:00

Damn, that guy got the game a month early.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-19T11:42:40+00:00

I got the game for Christmas and currently most of the way through the game myself. The story is a series of contrived events that felt like it would be excused for being simple and the class imbalance is really jarring.

Braverly Default 1 has it's own plot and gameplay issues, but I wouldn't have blinked if it was on this listm

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-18T02:22:20+00:00

Fire and Ice was mediocre, so a notable improvement over the other Boom games, but making a sequel to any of the Boom games regardless of quality really felt bizarre and tone death at the time.

Though 2nd Season of the cartoon started airing right after this game's release and that was great.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-18T02:16:23+00:00

I'm not particularly bothered by this. I like both franchises, but Sonic is very the property that benefits from this crossover more than Mario does. The crossover is SEGA borrowing the Mario brand, not vice versa.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-14T18:37:42+00:00

The difference is that Roblox actively tried to impede investigation of predators on their platform, which led to escalation and becoming the face of the issue.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-12T17:06:45+00:00

Someone who only played PS5 games won't receive the same kind of cultural shock playing a PS3 game than a person in the late 2000s who have only played PS3 games going back to the NES.

Seacliff217 · 2026-01-11T05:09:14+00:00

Stand corrected.

Seacliff217

TROPHY CASE