Mario Tennis Fever is a riot, despite another underwhelming Adventure Mode

It’s match point and it’s my chance to clinch the game. I prepare for the coup de grâce, my special Fever Shot, which will ensnare our opponents in an electrified trap. I smile as I think of how this devious plan is befitting of my mustache-twirling Waluigi. But as I’m about to deliver a shocking defeat to our rivals, Rosalina lets out her own Fever Racket’s supermove, engulfing me in flames, depleting my HP and temporarily jettisoning me from the court.

Unable to play for an agonizingly long 10 seconds, I watch in terror as my duos partner Donkey Kong is now forced to contend with both Rosalina and Princess Peach, his stocky gorilla frame desperately bounding from left to right to barely keep up with each rally. I begin to lose hope. I picked a partner who excels in strength, not agility. What hope does he have against the superior nimbleness of the damsel dynamic duo?

And sure enough, Peach tees up her Fever Racket power, which, like Rosalina’s, will litter the opponent’s side with devastating fireballs. I can’t watch, but I force myself to anyway, one eye through the hand covering my face. But lo and behold, Donkey Kong, somehow dashing with the speed of an anthropomorphic zebra, manages to blast the special back into the princess, taking her out not unlike I was. Rosalina, now without a teammate and having to navigate a burning court, simply can’t keep up, and DK eventually lands the final shot. My God, the mad monkey did it. We won.

That’s just one match I had in Nintendo and Camelot Software Planning’s Mario Tennis Fever, and it’s representative of the outstanding level of riotous fun you can have in the game. At its best, Fever brilliantly captures the exciting chaos of Nintendo’s best party games, delivering unexpected thrills every time you play. It takes the core of tennis, from serves and rallies to lobs and drop shots, and makes them much looser and wackier. It’s a frenetic arcade-y feel that brings that much more energy and charm to the sport.

It also helps that the aforementioned Fever Rackets, Fever‘s biggest addition to the long-running Mario Tennis series, is such a masterstroke. Essentially, these are 30 of these pieces of gear to choose from, and they each allow you to perform unique Fever Shot abilities once you fill a metre by performing successive rallies. These special moves range from those that create various environmental hazards (like aforementioned Flame and Lightning Rackets) to others that buff you (like the Ghost Racket, which turns you and your balls invisible, or the Shadow Racket, which creates a double of you to help out).

In a lot of ways, the Fever Rackets are reminiscent of the glorious versatility and bedlam afforded by the items in other popular Nintendo party games, like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. And like I mentioned earlier with Donkey Kong, a well-timed rally can actually reflect a Fever Shot to the sender, which helps balance this system. Of course, the Fever Rackets by their very nature still inherently place less of an emphasis on skill, but thankfully, there’s the option to turn them off if you want to focus on the smooth and refined core tennis mechanics.

And even without the Fever Rackets, you can still enjoy a ton of variety through Fever‘s other types of content. For one, the game boasts 38 characters who fall into different archetypes (like DK being stronger while Waluigi is faster) while having their own little distinctions, like Boo being able to add a particularly sly curve to shots. This is a marked improvement from the underwhelming 16 characters that Fever‘s original Switch predecessor, Aces, had at launch.

Fever also sports an impressive number of game modes. For instance, Mix It Up features unconventional twists like the Mario Wonder-inspired Wonder Courts that introduce Wonder Seeds that alter the match with quirky elements like bouncing Hoppos or snake-like Warp Pipes. In Trial Towers, meanwhile, you have limited lives to take on 10 short matches with special conditions, like the opponent being invisible or the environment being stormy. These kinds of modes are excellent ways to shake things up, allowing Nintendo to take the idea of “tennis game” to its very limit.

But what holds back Fever somewhat is its Adventure Mode. Indeed, while Fever as an all-around package is bigger and more complete than its predecessors, it once again fails to deliver when it comes to this single-player campaign. It starts out solid — after a gorgeously animated cinematic, Mario and friends are transformed into baby versions, forcing them to have to find a way to turn back. But unfortunately, the actual process of doing that is pretty dull.

Basically, about half of the already short three-ish hour storyline involves Mario and co. training at a tennis academy. It’s a glorified tutorial that painstakingly goes through each of the game’s many nuances ad nauseam. It feels incredibly repetitive, especially as you hear the same canned dialogue from Toad and the Talking Flower, the latter of which is another Mario Wonder inspiration but one that I wish actually stayed in that game. (He never shuts up across pretty much every one of Fever‘s modes, and you can only turn him off in some of them.) While you do level up and increase some attributes by going through these minigames, like improved shot and run speed, topspin, slices, and flats, it’s the most superficial of RPG systems that doesn’t really make a tangible gameplay difference.

Adventure Mode eventually opens up to a have more of an actual “adventure” feel by giving you a little world map and some boss fights to tackle, but it’s all pretty thin. Honestly, the whole mode just feels perfunctory, like Camelot heard people gripe about the series’ past campaigns and added the illusion of a deeper campaign without it actually feeling meaningful to play. No one was expecting anything groundbreaking, of course, but even a little bit of remotely clever writing à la Paper Mario could have gone a long way.

Look past this underwhelming campaign, though, and you have another thoroughly entertaining Mario sports game on your hands. From the excitement of the eclectic Fever Rackets to the diverse assortment of modes offering dynamic spins on the concept of tennis, Fever is an absolute blast, especially in Duos. It’s a solid start to the Switch 2’s first full year on the market, and I’m looking forward to it serving up even more fun as I play with people online in the days to come.

Mario Tennis Fever launches on February 12 on Nintendo Switch 2.

Image credit: Nintendo