The world of Tennis is no stranger to me. While I have absolutely no skill in playing the actual sport despite my High School gym teachers’ valiant efforts to train us, I have spent most of my life watching professional matches with my mother. While many sports have successful video game franchises, tennis is not one that ever takes the limelight like the yearly Madden and MLB The Show entries. Enter Tiebreak, a video game focused on the professional side of Tennis. Prior to receiving the code for this game, I had never heard of Tiebreak. While I went into this game with an open mind, I quickly came to realize why this game never came to my attention until now.

Tiebreak was developed by Big Ant Studios and published by Nacon. The Nacon website describes Tiebreak as “the most realistic tennis simulation ever released, capturing the essence of the game on the court and the challenge of managing a career throughout an entire season of 90 official tournaments, facing over 120 licensed professional players. Each professional player, from Novak Djokovic to Nick Kyrgios, from Iga Swiatek to Caroline Wozniacki, has been meticulously studied to replicate their techniques and strategies, immersing players in the very essence of WTA and ATP tennis.” Most of this sounds like the typical sports game jargon that is associated with every sports title released. It is nice that they explicitly state that the professional players have all been licensed to be in the game, considering that this was a rarity in the world of professional sports games up until recently. 

Let us first dive into an essential part of every single game, the user interface. Tiebreak has a mixed bag where some aspects of the UI are amazing and other parts are downright terrible. The amazing part is the overall menu. Everything looks sleek and clean, with a number of technical details presented in a way that is simple for people of all knowledge levels to understand. During gameplay, the scoreboard mimics what a viewer would see during a televised professional tennis match which allows for a realistic experience. The gameplay itself however, is where things start to go a bit sideways. The controls and difficulty of the game hold nothing back. The controls are unforgiving in their technicality, and your opponents are absolutely brutal. I had a feeling that this would be the case when I hopped into the tutorial just to get a feel for the controls. 

The tutorial is something that definitely needs adjustment. While many parts of it are simple to learn, the types of swings and their strength are not well explained in the tutorial. I think the biggest mistake with the tutorials is that they do not offer multiple ways of learning the controls. They often just have text for what you should do and leave you to your own devices. There are no hints that pop up saying to try doing this to correct the skill, or any sort of visual representation that gives you another look at what the game is trying to teach. I went as far as looking at guides and videos to try to learn how to do what the game was trying to teach, but it appears that this is an issue that a lot of people have complained about. I don’t know if Big Ant Studios was intending to design the “Dark Souls of sports games” without checking out their other games. 

The other thing that seems to be lacking from Tiebreak is the soundtrack. There doesn’t appear to be any significant music that appeared during the time that I played. While Tennis is obviously a much different sport compared to baseball and football, with how music plays a factor during matches, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have put in a few catchy songs within the menus or loading screens. I tried to see if there was one that I just never heard, but the only thing that I found was a fan of the game who made their own for the community to listen to while playing Tiebreak. This definitely seems like a positive for the game. Considering that a fan was willing to put in that much effort for them, there is at least a community that would be willing to stick around for the next Tiebreak. 

Overall, Tiebreak is not a game that I can recommend at this time. If the developer decides to give this game a bit more love and attention, I think that this could be a title that every Tennis fan could pick up and have fun with. As things stand right now, this will likely only appeal to the most hardcore of Tennis fans and those gamers who enjoy an absolutely brutal challenge. Saying that last part seems absolutely ridiculous, considering that this is a Tennis video game. However, it also goes to show just how realistic this game is trying to be. It just seems like this game’s realism may have caused it to get a bit too close to the sun. If you are looking for other sports games, check out Taylor Bauer’s Out of the Park Baseball 26 review right here. 

A PS5 review copy of Tiebreak+ was provided by Nacon for this review

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Tiebreak+

49.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Licensed Athletes
• Realistic Matches

Cons

• Unresponsive Controls
• Tutorial with Missing Pieces
• No Significant Soundtrack