Grand Slam Tennis PC system requirements

Grand Slam Tennis 2 is a followup game to Grand Slam Tennis (a Nintendo Wii exclusive title), but cannot really be considered a sequel. The game is entirely different from that of the Wii, and has been released for the Xbox 360 as well as PS3 (but not on Wii). It is the first EA Sports tennis title to grace an HD console, and comes up against the tennis sim Top Spin, as well as Virtua Tennis, featuring an arcade tennis style.

As the name suggests gameplay is based around the four Tennis Grand Slam Tournaments, having secured the license to all four Slams including exclusively featuring Wimbledon. The career mode should be the major highlight for the game, but sadly the game serves up a series of disappointing double faults and unforced errors.

The idea is not new – create a player from scratch, then take it through a career (in this game the player has a finite career spanning 10 useful playing years). Similar to tennis games that have preceded it, the career mode centers around the major Slams each year, with players choosing to build up to these Slams in a number of ways including exhibition matches, warm-up tournaments, or training. Each of these offers different ways to build up your player’s attributes as they aim for Grand Slam glory, and the chance to take the number 1 crown.

Grand Slam Tennis 2 introduces the Total Racquet control system, which basically maps the left analogue stick to controlling player movement, while the right stick mimics the swing of the tennis racquet (much in the same way recent golf games have used the right stick to mimic the swing of the club). No buttons are used at all in the control scheme, although players that hate these controls can choose to use the four face buttons in the same fashion as other tennis games to hit flat, slice, and top-spin shots.

To hit a flat shot, the right stick is pushed forward from neutral in the direction you intend the ball to travel. To hit with topspin, the right stick is pulled downwards to "wind back" before pushing it up in the same fashion. Slice is hit by pulling the stick back and then returning it back to neutral as your player swings through the ball. It takes a little getting used to, but the training sessions with a condescending John McEnroe will bring new players up to speed. The controls work reasonably well, but occasionally the ball travelled off in the opposite direction than intended, or the swing failed to make contact with the ball for no apparent reason resulting in embarrassment. The whole experience felt a little like playing with Wii motion controls – most of the time it works fine and feels natural, but intermittently a gesture doesn’t seem to register as you had intended it. The PlayStation 3 version of the game supports Move for controls, but ButtonMasher was sent the Xbox 360 version for review, which does not support Kinect controls.