EA Grand Slam Tennis

With the All England Lawn Tennis Championships about to start, now's the time to get fit whilst improving the chances of a British player actually winning.

Tennis games on consoles invariably fit into two camps: the realistic and the arcadey. In the past year we've had Top Spin 2 and Virtua Tennis that fit into the realistic model and before that there were likes of Super Tennis, a great game for the SNES, and SEGA Super Tennis.

The trouble the realistic ones often have is that they have a learning curve steeper than the ascent of Everest and the arcade ones, although fun, don't have the detail to satiate the true tennis fan. This though is where Grand Slam Tennis comes in. It's a great fun tennis sim, that feels like an arcade game. And best of all it doesn't fall into the usual Wii trap with badly implemented motion controls.

Basically it's an example of the games you should have on the Wii. You swing the Wiimote as if it is your tennis racket. To perform different types of shot you don't press a button, but it's all to do with the movement of your racket. This means if you want to do a top spin shot, you start you swing low and end your swing high, just as you do in tennis. Then to slice it you do the opposite, putting back spin on the ball. If you hit the ball straight then it will be a flat shot.

All this means that not only is Grand Slam Tennis the most accurate tennis game we have ever played, but it's a good workout at the same time. In fact the game can even monitor just how many calories you have burnt off playing the game if you like.

Being an EA game if of course has the rights to all the four Grand Slam tournaments: the Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open. The four different surfaces: cement, clay, grass and concrete all play differently and you have to adapt your game accordingly.