Tiebreak Review: Raising the Bar for Tennis Gaming

While it’s not their first foray into the world of tennis gaming, Tiebreak was an ambitious step forward for the genre by developer Big Ant Studios. Wielding both the power and the pressure of being the “Official Game of the ATP and WTA,” Tiebreak needed to be ready to deliver once a worldwide release arrived. Becoming the standard bearer in video games for an entire sport is no small task, and that’s especially true when one of the biggest companies in gaming publishes your primary competitor. 

Firm Foundation From Gameplay to Career Mode 

The most important thing for any tennis video game to nail is the actual on-court action, and Tiebreak delivers both the mechanics and presentation at near-perfect pitch. For beginners or anyone in need of a refresher, they’ve got a great selection of tutorials testing out the controls while also explaining when certain moves are most useful. 

While lower difficulties give you more forgiving opponents, Tiebreak pushes players to refine their fundamentals by keeping the impact of your own mistakes high. Winning in tennis is just as much about your own ability as it is consistency, and you can quickly defeat yourself with botched serves and overpowered shots that land well out of bounds. 

The controls are easy to understand but difficult to master, and all of this pairs with the best visuals tennis gaming has seen to date. Excellent character models, lighting, animations, and stadium environments pair with quality sound editing to really immerse players in the excitement of each game. 

For the most part, players in Tiebreak will bounce between a few key game modes. Online play is simplified with regular matches, leaderboards, and tournaments that keep the focus on your own skill. Offline play options include setting up WTA or ATP tournaments with specific player lineups and exhibition matches, but the real star of the show is career mode. Tiebreak has a fantastic character creation suite that takes full advantage of the game’s crisp graphics, and it includes a relatively rare feature in sports gaming. 

Many major sports simulation games require you to use a custom created athlete in career mode, but Tiebreak also allows you to take anyone from the game’s extensive 121-player roster into a long-term career. Career mode hinges mostly on your ability to succeed from match to match and tournament to tournament, but there are just enough strategic extras with management of your support team, sponsors, and schedule throughout each year. 

The last big highlight of Tiebreak is the Djokovic Slam Challenge, and this spotlight mode takes players through over 20 different championship moments before culminating in Djokovic finally winning an Olympic gold medal on August 4, 2024. It’s a great way to learn the history of Djokovic’s legendary career while also pushing yourself to improve with each challenge. 

The only real flaws in Tiebreak have more to do with the limited appeal of tennis than poorly crafted aspects of this game. Tennis gameplay can become a bit repetitive, and most opponents have similar playstyles that just get more effective or ineffective based on ratings and your difficulty choice. We haven’t bumped into any major glitches or bugs, and some post-launch updates have already worked on fine tuning the console experience even more. 

The Unavoidable TopSpin 2K25 Comparison

Tiebreak enters a genre that only really has one other option at this point in TopSpin 2K25. Other tennis simulation games have popped up in the past, from the earlier Top Spin releases to Big Ant Studios’ own AO Tennis and AO Tennis 2 releases, but the current landscape is pretty much just Tiebreak and TopSpin 2K25. 

Tiebreak started early access in January 2024, but it was a PC exclusive still going through final stages of refinement until the recent worldwide release branched out to consoles. We previously reviewed TopSpin 2K25 after it released back in April, though our current review scoring guidelines were not in place at that time, and it felt like a great return for the TopSpin franchise and the relatively niche subgenre of tennis simulation games. 

After spending plenty of time in Tiebreak, TopSpin 2K25 just feels inferior in every single way. The core gameplay, graphics, character creation suite, career mode, and presentation in Tiebreak are just better across the board. Tiebreak also has a logo creator, venue creator, and community share center where logos, venues, and players can be uploaded for other players to download and use, none of which is available in TopSpin 2K25. 

While there are only about 20 athletes on the TopSpin 2K25 roster, it’s the only game of these two that has John McEnroe, Serena Williams, Andre Agassi, and Steffi Graf. Tiebreak makes up for that by having more than five times as many athletes on the full roster, and only Tiebreak has Novak Djokovic, Aryna Sabalenka, and Rafael Nadal. There is one massive thing TopSpin 2K25 has which is completely absent from Tiebreak: microtransactions. 

While TopSpin 2K25 fully commits to the 2K model of microtransactions for cosmetic upgrades and regular seasons pushing players to drop extra money for an exclusive reward path, Tiebreak’s only add-on is an extra Djokovic Challenges Pack DLC. The standard edition of TopSpin 2K25 is $59.99 while Tiebreak’s standard edition comes in at $49.99, but players who jump up to the Ace Edition for $59.99 also get the Djokovic DLC and an Adidas Vintage Pack with a few exclusive Adidas outfits and rackets. On top of all those practical advantages when comparing the two, Tiebreak just has more heart than TopSpin 2K25.