A little over a year ago, I reviewed Smash Court Tennis 3 for the PSP and gave it an average review. For whatever reason, Namco thought it was good enough to bring the game over to the Xbox 360. Even though it’s $20 less than a regular game (and at the same price point as the PSP game), it’s still not worth the price of admission. In fact, the PSP game is better. Much better.

This game screams PlayStation Portable port. While the game may look decent on the PSP, it looks downright awful on the Xbox 360. Tennis is a game of angles and physics. However you see some pretty weird angles with your racket that I don’t think Gumby could even hit. It greatly takes away from any semblance of realism one would expect from a tennis simulation. Further, the animations and player models are pretty nasty – colors are oversaturated and players look odd when “running.” That term is in quotation marks because a player running looks more like a player walking, and that’s not good in a game that requires quick reflexes.

You might be able to overlook a game that looks bad but plays well; however that is not the case with Smash Court 3 — it plays just as bad as it looks. Each controller face button represents a shot type – slice, topspin, flat or lob. Sounds good; however the way you control the swing is just awful; you ‘preload’ the swing by holding the button before you swing – then you release the button at the time you wish to swing.

This swing mechanic results in very awkward shots – shots never seem to go where you aim and even worse, quite often you’ll just plain miss the ball despite being in the right location to hit the ball back. Serving is just as bad – you are supposed to wait until you see a circle become one with the ball, making it glow. However on many plays you won’t even see the circle. It is just plain silly that a move that is probably one of the easiest in tennis is so difficult in this game.

Graphically, at first glance it looks pretty good; however upon further review, things are pretty bad. First the player models and the outfits they wear do not change. You’re thinking ‘wow…the players have wrinkles in their clothing’ – but they stay there exactly throughout the whole game. Then you’ll see players magically slide to their positions. The ball itself just is a yellow blob; you don’t see any sort of spin on it when you hit it. One might even surmise that you’d have just as good graphics if you connected your PSP to a PC and played that game.