Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis

 

Welcome back to Thrak Attack, what's your adventure? Today's adventure takes us to the many iconic places from our childhoods if every show from our childhood was about tennis. From the Krusty Krab, to the Sewers of New York City, to the sandlot where we eat Jollie Ollie Ice Cream. Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis is the next iteration of Nickelodeon's attempt to become like the Super Mario Franchise. Let's see if it worked!

Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis is available on Apple Arcade so I played it on my iPad but I think it would be better off on my phone. Some of the controls seemed a little weird to be played on touch screen but oddly enough that was only during the tutorial. The game's tutorial made me think this game had terrible controls but in actual matches it actually feels pretty good!

Nickelodeon over the past few years has been attempting to create a series of video games that replicate Nintendo's approach to family fun gaming. There's a Mario kart clone, a super smash bros clone, and now there's the tennis clone. This works because Nickelodeon have a variety of characters that work with this style and fill up the rosters nicely. It doesn't work because every game is so different they don't feel like the same style of game.

So even though the concept of the game is solid, and the controls are actually pretty good. The game's progression is where it falls flat. Instead of having vastly different characters that do different things, you have to use SpongeBob until you get to level 3 and unlock a Ninja Turtle... now that's all fine and dandy until you want to use a character that isn't unlock able until level 70. I'm sure that not everyone wants to use SpongeBob and when you have stats that grow every time you win a match, why would you want to switch your character after you unlocked a new one? It just doesn't work for this style of mobile game!

When reviewing video games I give out stars for these categories... art style, controls, UI, smoothness, plot, characters, music, gameplay loop, length, and overall feeling. This game receives points for art style, controls, UI, smoothness, characters, and music.

Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis receives 6 out of 10 stars.