Playing a preview build of Mario Tennis a few weeks ago and then getting deep into the online beta, I was excited to get my hands on the final version of the game and it hasn't disappointed.

It goes without saying that Nintendo would bank on the success of Mario and the Switch to rake in some new fans of their Mario Tennis series. I have never been a massive fan of the series as I do not like the sport and tennis games just never appealed to me.

a fully-featured if mildly frustrating return to form for Camelot

Aces' new special moves turn the casual back-and-forth into a frantic high-speed chess match, while the story mode offers an ample number of charmingly wacky challenges that help to hone your skills in the process and get you match fit for online competitions. But here’s the problem: you’re only given the option of one-off matches against friends and strangers for online. At launch there are no tournaments, no leaderboards and not even any sort of ranking system, so it’s going to be difficult to find someone on you skill level. Sure, there will be timed events that will see online tournaments become available for select days, but that’s still very inconvenient for the average player. But if you’re happy to just play through the short adventure and reserve competitive matches for your friends, then Aces is undoubtedly one of the best multiplayers on the Switch right now.

The new tennis features give matches frantic fun ; The Adventure Mode is a terrific teacher; Creative boss battles are bursting with originality;

Shallow online features; A couple of of level designs are infuriating in Adventure Mode;

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Thanks to a beta this past weekend, Nintendo gave Switch owners the first taste of its upcoming sports title, Mario Tennis Aces . Since it was supposed to be part demo and part test of the game's network code, players only had access to a portion of the single-player and online multiplayer action...

A tennis game with a narrative doesn't seem all that unusual, but when that tale involves a forgotten kingdom and a tennis racket called Lucien that controls people via its possessed grip tape, you know this is probably isn't quite the brand of tennis you see on the ATP tour.

Bright; solid visuals; Cohesive controls; Good array of game modes

Punishingly hard at times; Some courts are downright unfair; Too complicated to pick up and play