Buy my game, I hate you
One of the least welcoming and most unfriendly games I've ever been totally unable to stop playing, Evolution Tennis (today reduced to 59p) is so spartan it barely even qualifies for the term 'half-baked'. If we're being generous, there's half a game here. But it's a heck of a half a game.
A front end that's a piece of exhibition-level brutalism leads you swiftly into a tennis tournament. You can't even enter your name (you go by the title PLAYER), the tournaments comprise fixed three-set matches (no quick game here), and once you're playing there's no way out other than to win, lose or press the Home button – you don't even get pause or quit options.
(And make no mistake, Evo Tennis is seriously hardcore about committing you to a match. It supports multitasking, but retains the current tourney even if you actually close it right down from the Home screen menu bar. If you start a competition, you HAVE to either play it all the way to the end, or delete the app and reinstall it. Now THAT'S dedication to user hostility.)
But the actual tennis engine at the heart of Evolution Tennis is a work of genius. A single tap on your side of the court positions your player to receive the ball (though you can make as many taps as you like), and a single tap on the opponent's side directs your return. If you don't aim, you play a safe automatic shot, but the quicker you get into position and tap the opponent's side, the faster your shot will go.
It takes a moment to grasp the system, and a whole lot longer to master it sufficiently to win a point, never mind a game or a match. (It's particularly hard to stop getting caught out by the CPU playing high lob shots.) This is a game of pure skill, with no concessions made to hand-holding whatsoever.
But when you do start to get even a tiny bit competent you feel like the king of the world, because those simple two taps let you play smashes, volleys, passing shots, cross-court backhands and just about anything else you can think of. I've been playing tennis games since Pong and I've never played one with this level of sophistication and realism from such incredibly accessible and intuitive controls.
Evolution Tennis desperately needs a massive user-friendly overhaul of the structure to turn it into the finished article, but the actual tennis is simply fantastic. Get it now while it's cheap, enjoy knocking the ball around and send the developer severed body parts in the mail until he updates it into the greatest tennis game ever made.
This really is great.
If you've got an Android phone, check out Tiny Football which takes a similar touch approach but has the decency of having a few modes and an in game menu.
https://market.android.com/details?id=bagins.football
"Get it now while it's cheap"
I think it's been 59p for most of it's app store shelf life. It went up to £1.19 a few weeks back and has just now dropped back down again. Personally, I think this is the best single player tennis game I've ever played, regardless of the lack of options.
Not very shockingly, you are absolutely right. It might not be particularly polished, but the mechanics are excellent. This probably the best tennis game I've played since the Dreamcast-era.
Smashing game. Thanks for finding this, it's quite remarkable.
It went up to £1.19 a few weeks back and has just now dropped back down again.
Fantastic game and typical of all fantastic games, just when you think something about it is prohibitively hard or badly done, you realise its something about your play that you can address.
Really struggling with close net play though, even the easier CPU opponents hand my arse to me on that one.