Rafa Nadal Tennis

As Wimbledon 2007 fades into distant memory and British tennis fans continue to wonder why as a nation we're unable to produce a player capable of getting within spitting distance of the final, it's a good time to take stock.

Spanish supremo Rafael 'Rafa' Nadal may have fallen at the last hurdle for the second year running against arch-nemesis Roger Federer, but the world No.2 is starting to become a particularly lucrative marketing proposition – as this latest handheld tennis epic proves.

Developed by Virtual Toys and published by THQ Wireless, Rafa Nadal Tennis attempts to recreate the action, intensity and passion of the sport on your trusty mobile phone. Interactive interpretations of this popular pastime have been commonplace since the dawn of video games – remember Pong? – so you'd expect the genre to be fairly refined by now.

Like all truly great sports titles, Rafa Nadal Tennis seduces the player with a muscular selection of options. Exhibition mode enables you to play a one-off game of one, three or five sets. Playing for the first time triggers a handy Tutorial, which takes you through the wide range of shot and control options before encouraging you to try them out yourself – often repeatedly – until you get them right. It's a laborious way to start proceedings but it breaks you in nicely for the challenge ahead.

Championship is the meat of the game and is exactly what you'd expect it to be – a series of matches against a variety of opponents, with the ultimate aim of reaching the final and lifting the coveted trophy at the end.

It's possible to select your court surface before entering into a game, with clay, grass and concrete being the three rather predictable options. As you might have guessed, the type of court affects the bounce and speed of the ball.

The final (and possibly most interesting) mode is the multiplayer Bluetooth option, which enables you to wirelessly connect to a fellow Nadal fan and indulge in a bit of two-player tomfoolery. Although a small amount of latency was detected, we were pleasantly surprised at how well this system works.

Compared to Sega's visually stunning 3D simulation, Super Real Tennis, Virtual Toys' effort does look rather drab. Matters aren't helped by some strangely stilted animation but the majority of the game is workmanlike in terms of presentation and can hardly be accused of being ugly – plain is a more fitting description. And sound-wise it's better, with every stroke of the ball accompanied by a satisfying sampled 'whack' effect.

Tennis is a fast-paced sport and the best video game representations have always granted the player accurate and instinctive control methods. Given the control problems that are often apparent when playing games on a mobile phone, you'd be forgiven for expecting the worst here.

Mind you, Virtual Toys has engineered an interface that has been designed with the limitations of the mobile phone keypad in mind. To move your player in the direction of the ball and strike it with a confident smash, all you have to do is hold down the 'action' button. This causes your onscreen avatar to bound towards the incoming ball and make a return shot. It may sound cheap, but there are caveats to this system.

For one, the return shot is usually aimed straight at your rival and isn't particularly powerful, meaning this technique should only be called into play when you're struggling to keep up in a ferocious rally. And even if you decide to move your player around manually, they will automatically return a shot so long as you place them alongside the ball.

However, in order to make point-winning strokes you have to get a lot more involved. Direction and spin can be applied by pushing left or right on the D-pad as you hit the ball, and you can lob by pushing backwards or give your shot that extra wallop by pushing up (or forward) on the pad. Combining the action button with directions on the D-pad results in a wide range of shot possibilities, but unfortunately the system is just too counter-intuitive to be wholly successful.

For instance, it's far too easy to hold down the action button for too long when making a shot, causing your player to automatically dash in the direction of the ball and there confuse and befuddle you. Also, applying direction and speed to each shot is a rather random affair that only seems to work intermittently at best.

The longer you play the more accustomed to become to the foibles of the control set-up and once you've improved your timing, less shots are missed – but it's still a frustrating game to play. There's nothing worse than taking a match to the wire only to be denied victory thanks to a missed shot caused by the complexities of the controls.

Tennis games have to be intuitive and offer unhindered control to the player, otherwise they're doomed to failure. Sadly, Rafa Nadal Tennis struggles to bestow the player with the required level of control to be enjoyable. The Bluetooth multiplayer mode is interesting and it certainly feels fairer playing against an opponent that is lumbered with the same control woes as you, but ultimately the game plays more like a tired Henman than a resurgent Federer.