The Sony PlayStation Portable hasn’t been churning out the tennis games; in fact Namco’s Smash Court Tennis is the first non-Virtua Tennis game released for the console. Why is the “3” in the title? The first two games were on the PS2 so this is technically the third game in the series, although it’s the first one on the PSP. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Smash Court is trying to take a page out of the Virtua playbook: there’s a training mode, a career mode, an exhibition mode and a mini-game mode. The career mode is somewhat different from the Virtua model as you’ll be able to train each week, enter a tournament or attempt to get a sponsorship. In order to get a sponsorship, you must complete a task, like beat an opponent with five points, or something along those lines. It’s an interesting idea, but rather silly because you could theoretically play very well in a contract mini-game but stink in your regular career, and it is doubtful someone will continue to sponsor you in real life.

The career mode is part RPG as you earn experience points which you can then use to increase your skills such as ‘power,’ ‘backhand,’ and ‘footwork.’ You can also add special abilities, which give you a boost if you’ve scored a few points in a row or are playing on clay, etc. In order to purchase these special abilities your skills must be at a certain level (i.e. not all abilities are available at the start of your career).

When you start off ranked very low (say, #250 in the world), your abilities are terrible. You are a seemingly fat, lumbering guy that can barely return a ball. As you progress and move up in the rankings you’ll become a much better player. In the Pro Tour you also select a rival who will start at the same level as you, and ironically, you’ll be playing this guy quite a bit. It’s rather odd to beat someone ranked #82 in the world in the semifinals only to play the guy with the same ranking as you in the final.

The issues with the game are more control-based than anything else...my alter-ego magically returns a volley by moving over from center court to the far right of the court. This display is unnerving; you think you’re playing an online game that has some lag to it.

The gameplay itself isn’t bad, the AI is pretty good and the computer figures out where to hit the ball so it’s tough to anticipate a shot. Your control of your shots is not good at the outset, even if you aim close to the net, the ball keeps going out over the baseline. Serves are well done; a 105 mph serve and a 76 mph serve are completely different in this game as they should be.

You can play as one of sixteen different real life players, although their virtual personas aren’t as good as they are in real-life both ability wise and graphically. First off, it is the PSP so you expect some graphical issues but boy, from far away, this game doesn’t look good at all. Up close and personal, the players do look ok, but from the game playing camera the players look more like ants.