Wow! What a hilarious review!
It reminds me in a lot of ways of some of the Wii Music reviews I've read. The reviewer sucks at the game (like Casamasina) and thus concludes that the game sucks. From the Eurogamer review:
but the problem is just that - winning games is disproportionately and unfathomably tough.
As something of a tennis gaming veteran, I kicked off on the game's medium level to see how I got on, but was forced to drop it down simply to see if I'd fare any better. The difference was minimal, and, again, the problem was nearly always down to actual shot-placement rather than fierce AI. In the heat of a lengthy rally, you might be doing fine, but one misread shot and you're another point down.
"Unfathomably tough." "one misread shot and you're another point down." Yeah, who ever told you that tennis was easy? And why would you think that your status as "a tennis gaming veteran" would translate at all to something that actually requires you to, you know, swing at a ball (or a virtual one anyway)? He's spent his entire life training his thumbs and thinks it matters to these new motion control schemes. It's like someone being a champion Guitar Hero player picks up a guitar and can't play it right off the bat... and thus decides that real life guitars don't work well -- they don't have the "precision" of a Guitar Hero controller.
Like I say, Wii Music was the first time I'd noticed it, but apparently it is the future: reviewers who are used to being able to pick up a game and display mastery at it from the get-go are going to suck at these 1:1 motion control games. Because many of their egos are so tied into their identity as super-gamers (they're professionals, after all), they'll feel hurt. And small. And angry.
Hilarious.
