E-Mail This Article to a Friend US open wide Cheap, slutty, and Stephen Colbert BY AARON SOLOMON
	Outlaw Tennis For Xbox and PlayStation 2 | Rated M for Mature | Published by Global Star Software | Developed by Jack of All Games

It’s not easy being a buxom, scantily clad video-game character these days. As this month’s Grand Theft Auto/"Hot Coffee" debacle has proved, nothing is too cheeky for Congress. And if you appear in a game rated anything higher than "T," you’re probably its next target. Good thing, then, that the gang from Outlaw Tennis are just that, a band of outlaws who couldn’t care less what the authorities have to say.

Unlike Jessica Rabbit, these girls are bad, and they’re drawn that way too. Since busting onto the scene with 2002’s Outlaw Golf, Summer and company have been featured in Outlaw Volleyball as well in G4 TV’s "Video Game Vixens" beauty pageant. (They did manage to steer clear of the pictorial — or is that pixtorial? — in the August 2004 Playboy.) Now they bring their formidable assets, and other parts, to the clay, ice, and lava — yes, I said lava — courts of Outlaw Tennis, which has almost as much to do with tennis as with the outlaws themselves.

There is plenty of tennis, to be sure, as well as football, baseball, and even a little Ping-Pong — yes, I said Ping-Pong. These are three of the seven available Match Modes, each coming into play as part of the Outlaw "tour" or as simple exhibition matches, and they all make for some surprisingly deep gameplay.

On the unlockable-content front, there are more than 10 courts to discover, ranging from the pits of Hell to the streets of New York. (They’re not the same thing?) And because this wouldn’t be an Outlaw game without them, there are plenty of skimpy costumes and accessories with which to deck out your character. But beware: the lewdness knows no gender.

There’s nothing here that’d be out of place on Spike TV or an episode of Temptation Island, but there are hints of something a little more sophisticated — if you can call allusions to Point Break and Three Amigos!, as well as veiled pokes at certain network announcers, sophisticated. These come in the form of Stephen Colbert’s commentary, which riffs on his "This Week in God" routine from The Daily Show but with a few more boobie jokes than usual.

The most tiresome aspect of Outlaw Tennis turns out to be the outlaws themselves. At first it’s fun to play dress-up with these dolls, but after two or three cut scenes, the novelty wears off. That the actual tennis trumps the outlaws was a pleasant surprise, as was the soundtrack, which, featuring Dean Ween and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, is better than any non–Grand Theft Auto soundtrack has the right to be. Although it’s hard to top NES’s relic Tennis for pure love-of-the-game enjoyment, the bonus content here — sure to give Mario Kart 64 and Super Monkey Ball a run for their money in college dorm rooms — and the low price ($20) warrant running with these outlaws.

Score: 7.0 (out of 10)