Grand Slam Tennis 2 Message Board

Grass, clay, and hard court surfaces impact play.

The name might lead you to believe otherwise, but it doesn’t take much time with EA Sports’ Grand Slam Tennis 2 to realize that this is a first-generation product, one that owes significantly more to Sega’s Virtua Tennis than the original, Wii-exclusive Grand Slam Tennis from a few years back. Sure, the evolution of the Virtua Tennis games has become, shall we say, subtle, over the past few years, yet Grand Slam Tennis 2 still can’t quite break out of that decade-plus shadow. It’s a decent start, but EA Sports still has some iterating to do before it’ll have a genuine competitor.

Though it trades the Japanese arcade gloss and crystalline guitars of Virtua Tennis in favor of EA Sports’ bloodless house style, the most meaningful differentiator in Grand Slam Tennis 2 lies in the controls. By default, the game attempts to map all of your racquet mechaniques to the right stick, and you’ll push the right stick down and up at various angles and with varying timing to serve and perform the flat, slice, top-spin, drop, and lob shots that make up your arsenal of moves.

While the underlying intent of the right-stick controls that EA Sports is so damn fond of is to create a more tactile connection to the on-screen action, the irony here is that it ends up feeling more complicated and mechanical. After spending some quality time being yelled at by resident pro John McEnroe in the tutorial--a must your first time in--I spent my first several hours with Grand Slam Tennis 2 with these right-stick controls. I wouldn’t say I struggled with them, but my performance improved immensely once I switched to the familiar face-button controls. Don’t chalk my preference entirely up to familiarity, though; it’s simply easier to perform with the precision of timing and aiming afforded by button presses, rather than the comparatively long throws and vague sense of position offered by the right stick.

I can just hear Pat Cash and John McEnroe, saying the same thing, over and over...

Digging into Grand Slam Tennis 2’s nest of menus, it’s hard to shake the sense that you’re playing “EA Sports Presents: A Sport,” with options that are bland, predictable, and limited. You can play singles and doubles on real courts like Wimbledon or generic EA Sports-branded courts, you can set up tournaments, you can play online. The game is well-stocked with male and female pros, both current and classic, though there’s not much personality beneath the likenesses. Even the character creator, which features EA Sports’ patent-pending horrible monster generator better known as Game Face, feels like it was cut whole-cloth out of the Tiger Woods series.

There are some interesting challenges in the game’s Classics mode, which sticks you in a series of real and fantasy scenarios from the past 30 years of pro tennis. The career mode, though, represents the bulk of Grand Slam Tennis 2’s bid at longevity, letting you take your custom tennis pro through a 10-year career. Though there’s no visualized calendar, you can feel time tick by with each event, which invariably boils down to either a bland training exercise, a one-off exhibition match, a pre-tournament, or a proper, bracketed-and-branded tournament like the Australian Open, US Open, or Wimbledon. With little-to-no variety in the actual career action, monotony kicks in quick. Even when playing on an elevated difficulty level, I was consistently steamrolling the competition well into my second year. I could complain more about the career mode’s ill-conceived player progression, which doles out points inconsistently and feels largely disconnected from the XP system, if I wasn’t so consistently crushing the competition regardless.

Good looks don't make up for a boring personality. For once!

The closest that Grand Slam Tennis 2 gets to having a personality comes from commentators Pat Cash and John McEnroe. At first, there’s a real casual, familiar charm to the way Cash sets up McEnroe’s long-form insights into your play style. It doesn’t feel scripted, and the expertise seems valid. The recorded material starts repeating itself almost immediately, to the point that it’s not uncommon to hear the same bits about playing deep and match point strategies several times over a single match, scuffing off any sense of naturalism almost immediately. Other quirks, such as the ability to play against Cash or McEnroe while they simultaneously provide commentary, reinforce the sense that the team behind Grand Slam Tennis 2 is still just getting its footing.

It’s damn hard to talk about video game tennis without bringing up Virtua Tennis, particularly when a game, like Grand Slam Tennis 2, hems so close to that original arcade formula. It’s a facsimile that’s executed well enough; there just aren’t any good reasons to recommend Grand Slam Tennis 2 over the games that it cribs from.

Grandslam Davis and Vinny Weasley take to the court and vie for total racquet supremacy.

Where the first Grand Slam Tennis was a cheerful, cartoony affair for the Wii, Grand Slam Tennis 2 is a much more serious one something far more in line with the slick professionalism of other EA sports games like Madden and FIFA. It's got a very deep career mode, a smart new control system that co...

Hey everyone, I’m Nate McDonald, one of the producers for EA SPORTS Grand Slam Tennis 2. We are very excited to be bringing this franchise to you on the PlayStation 3 platform. Right now, I’m going to give you a quick rundown of what you can be looking forward to in our demo, which is currently available on the PlayStation Store.

One of our big innovations is our All-New Total Racquet Control, where you can control every shot with the right analog stick, smashing forehands, backhands, overheads, and volleys with precision, accuracy, and power. You can utilize this control system to take your game to the next level, however, if you prefer the old school button controls, those are still available to play with as well.

Also new, and exclusive to PlayStation 3, is our PlayStation Move support. The motion control experience gets you on your feet and literally puts the racquet right in the palm of your hands. With a little bit of practice in the Practice Court prior to playing a match, you should have a good handle on all of the different control schemes in no time!

Once you have developed your shots in the Practice Court, take your skills to one of the most prestigious venues in sports: Wimbledon (exclusive to Grand Slam Tennis 2!). You can relive or rewrite the 2011 Wimbledon final match on Centre Court between the top 2 seeded players in the world, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Here you can feel the true excitement and emotion of championship tennis with EA SPORTS Grand Slam Tennis 2 in this 3 game set. You can play by yourself or against a friend on the same system.

We hope you enjoy the demo!

Keep an eye out for the full version of the product (available worldwide by February 14) which features over 20 of the greatest past and present players, a deep 10-year career mode, a wide variety of online gameplay features including EA SPORTS Game Face technology, and lots more.

For more info and to check out some producer videos, go here.

That’s it for now!

#grandslamtennis Things get sweaty in tennis, especially if you're playing on the clay courts of the Tennis Club de Paris. Hence, the proliferation of headbands on male players. This latest clip for EA Sports' upcoming serve-and-volley title showcases play on clay courts in the form of some of tennis' greatest rivalries. You'll get your chance to rock some headgear and gets your shorts dirty when Grand Slam Tennis 2 comes out on Valentine's Day. More »

EA has picked three different athletes from three different times and places to grace the just-revealed cover of Grand Slam Tennis 2. '70s American champ John McEnroe is in the middle with the hair, Russia's '00s champ Maria Sharapova is on the left, and current champ Novak Djokovic sits on the right, all with slightly different reactions to what we can only guess are balls hurtling through the air.

The diversity of choices emphasizes the game's Legends of Now and Then feature, which offers up 20 pro tennis stars from history to play in virtual person on the court. This version is also notable the Full Racquet Control, which allows you to use the controllers' right stick like a tennis racquet, as well as full motion controls with PlayStation Move. The first HD version of EA's tennis series will be on shelves next month, February 10 in Europe and February 14 in North America.

#grandslamtennis Last week, I reported on how EA's going to be handling the debut of their Grand Slam Tennis series on the Xbox 360 and PS3. During my hands-on time, I only got to see Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova in action but this new trailer shows off the other racket-wielding pros you'll be controlling in the 2012 release. No real surprises in the clip, but you do get to see the more photorealistic versions of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe who'll be playable in the game. The two greats were in the Wii-only Grand Slam Tennis 1, but that game's interpretations of its athletes were a bit more cartoony. More »

#grandslamtennis Tennis games and I have a weird relationship. It was an ancient, LCD handheld tennis game that taught me the fundamentals of tennis scoring. Numbers? Then words? Then words that are numbers? Huh? More »

Grand Slam Tennis on Wii was released back in 2009, and the title's solid gameplay and endearing exaggerated visual style added up to one of the best tennis games on the platform. That year EA also announced that the game would be making the transition to PS3 and 360, but that never eventuated. Fast forward to 2011 and EA Sports is finally bringing tennis to the HD consoles in the form of Grand Slam Tennis 2, and we've gone hands-on...