Mario Tennis Fever brings us the biggest roster in series history, with a total of 38 playable characters to unlock. There are 6 different character types, with different stats to suit a variety of on-court playstyles. But the real changeup from prior installments is the Fever Racket gimmick, which adds a new and improved twist to each tennis match. After swinging my way through multiple gameplay modes, I can confidently say that Mario Tennis Fever feels like the best installment in the series to date. But it’s also hard to justify its $70 pricetag for the amount of gameplay casual fans are likely to get out of it.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros
Cons
Biggest character roster in Mario Tennis history
Adventure mode is fairly short and basic
Fever rackets keep games interesting
Can get repetitive pretty quickly, making $70 a bit hard to justify
Multiple play modes to mix up the formula
Joy-Con controls only available in one game mode
Solid graphics and performance
A Massive Roster & Multiple Gameplay Modes Keep Mario Tennis Fever Interesting
Screenshot by ComicBook
Mario Tennis Fever boasts an impressive roster of longtime and newer Nintendo favorites. You can choose from 38 characters, once you’ve unlocked them all, with a solid lineup available right from the start. With 6 different character types impacting stats, it does genuinely feel different to play as Peach compared with Mario or Daisy. If you like to challenge yourself, you could easily sink hours into mastering each character’s unique playstyle. In fact, the game has ways of encouraging you to do just that.
There are multiple gameplay modes on offer in Mario Tennis Fever, each with a different twist on the tennis formula. As someone who is primarily a solo gamer, I was especially impressed with how many game modes felt genuinely satisfying to play on my own. Sports titles like Mario Tennis often feel geared towards multiplayer experiences, so it’s nice to see Mario Tennis Fever balance this well. Adventure Mode is fairly short (it took me about 4 hours), but is a fully single-player experience. Other modes like Tournament and Trial Towers can be played in co-op or solo, and they’re well-balanced for single players.
Unfortunately, Adventure Mode pretty much forces you to play as Baby Mario for the duration. I would’ve liked the option to choose from the baby character roster, since other characters are involved in the story. But even so, other modes do encourage slash force you to try out different characters. The Trial Towers in particular offer up different tasks to complete, each using a different character from the roster. This ensures you get a good sampling of the different play styles on offer, which I appreciated.
In addition to the robust roster, Mario Tennis Fever has 6 total main gameplay modes, plus ranked and online play. The number of options definitely offers a good bit of variety in how you play. That said, many modes go by pretty quickly. It took me just 4 hours to finish the Adventure story, and both Tournament and Trial Towers have just a handful of options each. Once you wrap these challenges and unlock the playable characters and rackets, the only thing left to appeal to most casual players will be multiplayer modes.
Fever Rackets Are a Fun & Frustrating Gimmick That Keeps You On Your Toes
Screenshot by ComicBook
When I previewed Mario Tennis Fever earlier this month, I noted that the Fever Rackets are a solid gimmick that levels up the franchise. After putting many more hours into the game for review, I stand by this original statement. The Fever Rackets are options in multiplayer, but they add a lot of variety and new challenges to overcome. Each one has a different on-court effect, and some are definitely trickier to navigate than others. As someone who has played many Mario Tennis games over the years, it didn’t take me long to remember the basics. But each new Fever Racket added a new variable for me to adapt to, keeping me on my toes.
The Fever Rackets are pretty fun to use, but they can be frustrating to play against. In particular, those like the Inky Racket and Ghost Racket that impact visibility can be a struggle to work around. But that makes it all the more satisfying when you finally get the hang of timing a swing at an invisible ball or work around ink splots on your screen. Unlocking the rackets is pretty straightforward, but still satisfying, as the game rewards you for completing more matches by bringing in new mechanics.
Single-player modes like Adventure and the Trial Towers do a decent job of bringing in these mechanics. But I think it’ll be competitive play that really lets this gimmick shine. Facing off against friends or in online modes while trying to master each of the 30 different Fever Rackets, and learn to fight against them, gives Mario Tennis Fever an edge over the fun but less game-changing power-ups of predecessors like Aces.
Like Any Mario Sports Game, Mario Tennis Fever Can Get Repetitive Fast
Screenshot by ComicBook
Mario Tennis Fever is easily the best game in the series to date. But it is still a Mario Tennis game. While the variety of gameplay modes introduces new challenges, you’re still ultimately just swinging a tennis racket. And that means that it can start to feel repetitive fairly quickly, even with the added challenge of Fever Rackets to mix things up. Most of the game modes use standard controls, with just one Swing Mode option to encourage the use of Joy-Con 2 motion controls. Those controls are very sensitive and take some getting used to, but I did miss when these kinds of sports games leaned more into interesting uses of motion controls.
As it stands, Mario Tennis Fever is a really solid sports game. It does a nice job of keeping everything that made the prior game fun, while adding new content to make it feel like a fresh new entry. And as I said when I played it for the first time, the graphics look great, really taking advantage of the Switch 2’s enhanced powers. And yet, it might not do quite enough to justify its price tag.
Mario Tennis Fever costs $70, a full $10 price increase over its predecessor. That’s standard for a Switch 2 game, but it still may be hard for casual players to justify. Even with the variety of game modes, playable characters, and fever rackets, the tennis gameplay itself can get repetitive pretty quickly. I very much enjoyed my time with the game, but it doesn’t feel like one that I’ll be sinking a ton of play hours into once I’ve ticked off the boxes of completing available single-player modes and unlocking the content.
Overall, if you like Mario Tennis games, this one is going to deliver for you. It’s a worthy successor to Mario Tennis Aces, delivering a decent amount of content for single-player and co-op play. But for more casual players, it may not offer quite enough gameplay to justify the $70 price.
Mario Tennis Fever comes out on February 12th for the Nintendo Switch 2. A Nintendo Switch 2 code for Mario Fever Tennis was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
