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Advantage Tennis (page 90, James Leach) =======================================

It seems that on this already overcrowded earth, we keep having to make room for more and more ST tennis games. Perhaps it's the kind of punishment we deserve. Certainly Dante would have approved.

But that's as maybe. Advantage Tennis, the latest, is a French offering which gives you the chance to beat some of the highest-paid brats in the world. All you have to do is boot-up, wait interminably for the three disks to munge their way through the unabridged version of 'War And Peace', and then choose your player's characteristics.

You start ranked 100 in the world. Not bad, but you're desirous only of place one, so you define what you think your best shots should be - forearm lob, backhand smash, two-handed canasta, that sort of thing. You can then practise these at leisure before jetting to the sun and burning out in front of a crowd of thousands.

When you eventually get to the point where you can enter a competition, you are presented with a typical Wimbledon-on-the-BBC type view of the action. The camera (as it were) zooms in and out slightly, and follows the on-court action avidly by swinging left and right. The players appear rather malnourished, but their movements are very lifelike. You feel that somebody at Infogrames has been watching a lot of tennis videos. This exactness is both a pleasure and a pain. It's brilliant when you've got the hang of moving - or are playing a particularly dreadful opponent - because you can really take part in exciting and realistic rallies. If they go on for long enough, the crowd applauds politely and you feel well satisfied.

But during most of the competitions, you're distinctly outclassed, and the stick-man you're controlling jerks pathetically to reach the 100mph smashes produced by the silicon marvel over the fence.

Sound is another aspect that has been carefully thought out. Digitised speech announces the scores in an infuriating American accent just like at real matches, and the ball strikes and bounces are completely believable - especially if you close your eyes and imagine strawberries and cream on a summer's day.

Advantage Tennis is far too stupid a name for something which is actually a lot of fun to play. That's the French for you, though. It's too difficult to get the hang of quickly, but if you persevere, not only do you improve, but you can save out your rapidly rising star player to disk. It's therefore a long-term project, so stick to practising your lobs and backhands and your patience will be rewarded.

The graphics are very fast and smooth, and the sprites actually behave like tennis players, but without the tantrums, sex scandals and so on. They don't look too impressive when stationary though, and the backdrops are all the same with minor colour changes for grass and clay.

Other piccies - like airliners travelling to exotic locations - are pretty good but rather irrelevant, as are the maps of the tournament circuit you follow - assuming you can get your service into shape before the next competition.

Overall, Advantage Tennis has to be one of the best games of its kind. If you can bear with the dreadful three disk accessing system and quickly click through the boring selection nonsense, you'll be pleased with the realism of the game itself. Love, love me do, as they say on court.

1. A rather good tennis game in here somewhere. Substantially better than Pro Tennis and International 3D Tennis.
2. It takes ages to set up and the off-court bits aren't as slick as the raquet-related action.