Grand Slam Tennis 2 career mode

Grand Slam Tennis 2 comes to the sports gaming sphere when fans of the sport already have two other options: Top Spin 4 and Virtua Tennis 4. To stand out from its competition, it's coming onto the court as the only game with all four Grand Slam venues and a deep roster of legendary players, featuring names that people from all walks of life should recognize. While these two elements are good, a weak career mode and a lack of additional courts cause Grand Slam Tennis 2 to land in the middle of the tennis gaming landscape.

For starters, Grand Slam Tennis 2 is extremely user-friendly thanks in part to two different control options. EA Sports games have never been afraid of letting you use the right analog stick to control things. Here, it's used for swing mechanics. Flicking the stick in a different direction will result in a different kind of shot. The stick is used for all aspects on the court, including serving, and it works well in all regards. But for those who want simple button presses to dictate shots, that option is also available and can be grasped in no time.

PlayStation 3 owners have the additional benefit of the Move controller, and as you'd expect, it works fairly well. There are some minor delay responses, specifically when you're required to bring your hand down to initiate a serve, but otherwise, no real problems exist. On top of that, if you have a navigation controller, or want to hold a Sixaxis in the other hand, you can use it to control your player instead of your player being moved automatically.

Grand Slam Tennis 2 also takes a different approach to serving. While other tennis games have you pay attention to the height of the ball or a meter to maximize speed, here you have a bell curve that determines power. Before initiating the serve, holding the serve of choice for a period of time dictates how much power you want. Based on your serving skill, a sweet-spot marker appears on the court. Once it's set, a bar moves and your goal is to stop the moving line at the peak of the bell curve to get the strongest shot possible. It isn't necessary to hit that sweet spot to have a successful shot, but the closer the line is to the peak, the more likely it is that the serve will result in an ace.