Mario Tennis Fever Delivers Scorching Service Returns!

Mario Tennis Fever (Nintendo Switch 2, £58.99)

Verdict: Feeling hot

Rating:

A squat plumber isn’t necessarily well suited to tennis — but Mario keeps on trying, bless him.

Mario Tennis Fever is, depending on how you count such things, the eighth or ninth mainline release since the series began in 2000.

Which begs the question: what’s new? And, thankfully, there is an answer. This game is distinguished by its ‘fever’ rackets: special-powered pieces of sporting equipment that might (in true Mario style) send fireballs shooting down the court, or summon lightning bolts from the air. Just charge them up sufficiently — and let rip.

It’s a great addition, even if it’s kind of surprising that it’s not been done before.

Return that serve, if you can: In Mario Tennis Fever, the little plumber is on fire

These rackets add delightful chaos to proceedings, but also new strategic possibilities. Do you, for instance, try to manoeuvre your opponent into the muddy sump you’ve created on his side of the court? Or do you aim away from it, to catch him by surprise?

It’s all made even more complex by the fact that, with quick enough wrists, your opponents can deflect your powers right back atcha.

It matters who those opponents are, though. Mario Tennis Fever is at its best when played against real people — ideally, sat next to you on the sofa; otherwise, across the internet. There’s an ease to the play that makes it more welcoming to all-comers than 2018’s Mario Tennis Aces, even if tour pros may miss some of that earlier game’s subtleties.

Ballet on the baseline: For a portly plumber, Mario has some pretty nifty moves 

There's no 'i' in team: Mario Tennis Fever is much more fun when you play with others

By contrast, the single-player options — especially the story mode — are thin and unlikely to hold anyone’s attention for more than a couple of hours.

But whoever wanted to play tennis by themselves anyway? Certainly not me. And certainly not Mario.

Romeo Is A Dead Man (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £41.99)

Verdict: Let’s leave him that way

Rating:

There’s very little metaphor, let alone subtlety, in Romeo Is A Dead Man. Even its title is utterly literal. It’s not quoting some bad guy to the effect that Romeo ought to die. It simply means that the protagonist of this bloody space opera is dead. Fact. He’s munched on by a zombie in the opening to the game.

But then Romeo Stargazer, to give him his full (silly) name, is resurrected — and recruited by cosmic cops to quell crime and the zombie threat.

Wherefore art thou Romeo Stargazer: Our hero is killed, resurrected, and given a silly name

What follows is a dimension-hopping slashfest, with limbs dropping as quickly as all the gags. Restrained it is not.

Perhaps we should expect nothing different from the Japanese video game designer Suda51 (yes, that’s the moniker he goes by). His previous creations have featured an anime-nerd with a laser sword, and a cheerleader with a chainsaw.

But where those earlier games — No More Heroes (2007) and Lollipop Chainsaw (2012), if you’re interested — had precise and propulsive gameplay, there’s just something lacking in Romeo Is A Dead Man. Beneath all the razzle-dazzle, here is a pretty standard third-person action game. It substitutes quantity for quality, with more and more baddies thrown in your way.

And even the razzle-dazzle doesn’t feel as razzley-dazzley this time round. Romeo Is A Dead Man switches dementedly between different graphics styles, from different gaming eras. There’s a bit of retro-pixel style, some early 2000s polygons, a whole bunch of anime.

It ought to be fun. And sometimes it is. But more often it just leaves you thinking: why?

This is a Frankenstein’s monster of a game, with the stitching coming loose. It is, indeed, dead on arrival.

Code Vein II (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £54.99)

Verdict: Bloody complicated

Rating:

Golly! Where to start? Perhaps with the basic fact that Code Vein II is the sequel to a 2019 game that landed without much of a bang but subsequently built an enthusiastic following.

Because everything else about this one is extremely tricky to explain.

The story? You’re a sorta-good sorta-vampire in a sci-fi world that’s already endured about 17 different apocalypses. And there are other sorta-bad sorta-vampires – but everyone’s sorta-united against a bigger threat that’s breaking its bonds, and now you have to time-travel...

Oh, I give up! What about the gameplay?

It's complicated: Code Vein II has vampires (good and bad), apocalypses, and time travel 

Well, it’s an anime-looking RPG in the – ahem – vein of the Final Fantasy series. But it’s also a punishing action game in the spirit of Dark Souls. You have a companion whose powers you can choose to absorb into yourself in order to...

Argh! I give up on that too! The point is that, if you ignore all the complexity and just let the general vibes of Code Vein II wash over you, there’s an enjoyable experience to be found here. The time-hopping mechanic makes your actions feel consequential, since what you do in the past affects what happens in the future. The combat is frequently exquisite.

The problem is that Code Vein II doesn’t want to let you ignore its complexity. Even just developing your character involves juggling between things called Blood Codes and Traits and Jails and Formae.

Every menu screen has more numbers on it than a NASA spreadsheet.

It’s a lot. And it left me feeling exhausted. The sorta-vampires are welcome to their 18th apocalypse.