Game Tennis Grand Slam for PC

Sports games on the Wii have come a long way since all of us became enamored with Wii Sports almost three years ago. With a disregard of what you looked like swinging a white stick in your living room and a few acute flicks of your wrist, you were skillfully battling family and friends in a number of often hilarious and competitive matches.

Recently released from EA Sports is Grand Slam Tennis, a game that will make Wii Sports tennis seem like Pong on your old Atari 2600 system. And, yes, there have been notable entries in the tennis game market that have come closer to the real thing like Virtua Tennis 2009, but GST makes us wannabe tennis stars feel closer than ever to the excitement of the pro game.

Developer EA Canada made sure that this title differentiated itself from earlier entries by offering the realest tennis experience one can get on the Wii. And while you certainly won’t be shuffling 27 feet left and right in your living room, the game focuses on racket control to simulate the real thing. GST takes advantage of the Wii Motion Plus attachment to give you much more precise control of your serves and volleys than other games.

And when I say the game is more real, I probably should also mention that it’s similarly more difficult. You may have been the Andre Agassi of Wii Sports Tennis, but leave your ego at the door when playing this one because it’s quiet difficult to master. Simple volleying won’t work as the computer opponents typically know how to “work” you, slamming shots right past your racket or surgically dropping other shots out of reach. You actually may be discouraged after firing up the game the first time as you quickly realize that it’s not very ‘fun’ to lose. What would’ve helped is a much more robust tutorial that shows a new gamer the ropes. Instead, you’re able to hit balls fired from a machine, with a limited set of options.

Further, with Wii-Motion plus enabled, you may find that your slap-happy tennis ways on Wii Sports will need some calibrating. It’s very easy to overreact and exaggerate your movements, actions that could easily result in a ball that lands out of bounds. Call me a terrible tennis player, but it took several matches before I was able to be even resemble a formidable opponent against the computer player.