Does this tennis sim serve a double-fault?
TIEBREAK is the official tennis game of the ATP and WTA. Take part in the major tournaments of the official calendar, challenge the community in multiplayer, and impose your style of play.
I honestly didn’t know an official tennis game was coming out until recently. With 2K bringing back Top Spin from the dead, I assumed that would be as close as we got to an “official” game, but it did strike me as odd that Top Spin 2K25 omitted a lot of tennis players, so I assumed it was down to licensing but was unaware that Tiebreak was in development.
It was nice to finally get an answer to the mystery, but the question is what does Tiebreak offer that Top Spin doesn’t apart from more licensed players?
Alas not as much as I would have hoped. Sure, it has a career mode and feels more authentic overall, but it also lacks anything that makes it stand out from other tennis games. It doesn’t feel as solid to control, the career mode itself is lacklustre in comparison to Top Spin 2K25, though I was impressed with the character creation options.
It just doesn’t feel like it has the same level of polish as its rival, which is the ultimate double-fault, especially coming from an official sporting game. You would have expected it to be trounce Top Spin in every department, but it ends up coming second instead. That’s not to say it’s a terrible game, it sadly can’t compete with 2K’s entry.
There have been patches coming thick and fast since launch, so maybe it isn’t the full package at this stage, but I have to judge it on its current state and suffice to say that it just doesn’t deliver what you would expect it to, at least for now.
The visuals are impressive though. Licensed players look authentic, the courts are nicely designed and the performance doesn’t drop at all in framerate. The audio is pretty standard as you would expect from a tennis game, but gets the job done.
The Verdict
While it can’t hope to topple this year’s Top Spin, Tiebreak does an admirable job in providing an official alternative with more licensed players. It’s not enough to make you switch if you have the other game, but with more improvements over time it has potential to serve up decent competition to its rival.