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.
The key innovation is Total Racquet Control, which takes its cues from other EA series’ like Skate and Fight Night. Essentially the right stick becomes the racquet, and there are a number of ways to hit the ball – pull back and flick forwards for top spin, tap forward for a flat shot, and pull back and then release for a slice. Modifier buttons allow for drop shots and lobs, while aiming is based on the direction you push the stick during the various motions.
The system was the result of a fair bit of iteration, according to Thomas Singleton, the line producer on the game. “When we first started working on it,” he told us, “we started getting pretty complex with Total Racquet Control. It was more like a Fight Night with lots of swooping motions. It doesn’t work well with the fast twitch experience where a tennis ball is travelling past you at upwards of a hundred miles an hour at times in real life, and pretty close to that within the virtual world.” Instead, they focused on getting the aiming right and giving players control over the depth of their shots – using the full court, in other words.
In practice it works well, but may take some time to master. By the end of our brief hands-on, we were winning matches, but were relying largely on top spin and flat shots, combined with tactical movement about the court. Slices and drop shots proved more difficult to use reliably, but with a new control scheme like this that’s hardly surprising. It’s built to have depth, after all.
Whether the added tactility of the control system will offer more nuance for players than a traditional button-based system therefore remains to be seen. There’s no doubt this is what the team is going for, but it doesn’t feel as natural a fit as something like Skate, where the flick-based control scheme was a masterful analogue for the real thing, with the kind of nuance and subtlety that ensured a learning curve that never stopped. Tennis is quite a different proposition, and – as far as tennis video games are concerned – is more about gross movements: positioning, timing and outmanoeuvring the opponent, as opposed to control subtlety. Here’s hoping more time with the game will reveal that the new system really is a step forward.
All that said, Total Racquet Control isn’t the only control option in Grand Slam Tennis 2. The game also supports PlayStation Move, and according to Singleton this was actually the main reason the project was taken off the backburner. When asked why the original PS3 and 360 versions never eventuated, he told us “We kinda shelved it and said – okay, the timing’s not right, let’s wait for something similar to happen in the hardware aspect of the industry. The PlayStation Move came around, and it was like okay, now is the time for us to build this product. Much like we did with the Wii version, putting the racquet in the palm of your hand and swinging it is a pretty cool thing. It’s highly intuitive.”
Move control works well, although we weren’t able to test it in conjunction with the navigation controller, so our hands-on had our player moving automatically across the court. Even so, aiming was responsive, and if the team can nail a natural feel for rolling your wrist for top spin and chopping at the ball for slices – along with the accuracy required, this could well be an impressive implementation of the tech.
Of course, for tennis fans, rock solid gameplay is only one part of the equation. There’s also the career mode, the online, the players and the tournaments to consider.
The team isn’t prepared to talk about exactly what it will be delivering in terms of the career mode and online yet, but Singleton promised us that they’re “definitely delivering a full feature set that you would expect from a depth standpoint from EA Sports. Everywhere from your single player journey in career mode to ESPN Grand Slam Classics, with people licensed like Bjorn Borg and Johnny Mac. You can imagine some of the matches that we’ve got from a historical standpoint, to our tournament mode to the training games, the practice mode and online. A full feature set in online too.” More details are set to be revealed in October.
What he will say, however, is that the game will have over 20 licensed players, from stars of the past to players currently at the top of the rankings. These include Stefan Edberg, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, the Williams sisters, Pat Cash, Michael Stich, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Maria Sharapova, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe.
The team is also really proud of its exclusives. “Wimbledon is exclusive to us,” Singleton explains, “just as McEnroe is also exclusive to us, so we’re the only place that you’ll win the grand slam championship other than actually on the tour itself. And we didn’t stop at just the centre court versions of each [location]. We don’t just have centre court at the Australian open. We’ve got outer courts to the inner courts. It’s a pretty cool gamut. It definitely paints a picture of the journey that you go on.”
Commentary will also be a big draw for the game, with John McEnroe and Pat Cash providing play-by-play commentary, as well as the colour commentary they’re known for. The commentary was largely captured by sitting the pair down in front of matches and having them call the action. “That’s the right way to go and man, were they awesome,” says Singleton.
“A lot of the stuff that you’ll listen to in the actual product is very conversation-based, which it should be, because while they’re talking to people at home, what we’re doing is capturing – in any broadcast presentation – a conversation taking place between two peers.”
It’s been a long time in the making, but Grand Slam Tennis 2 looks like it will make an impact in the genre. When asked whether Top Spin 4 informed the design process, Singleton says that “it affirmed our thinking, in that the right analogue stick is the way to go. It’s a great product and it’s still the highest rated tennis game on Metacritic to date. They’ve done a lot of things well, so we’d be na�ve to think ‘let’s disregard it’. So there’s a lot of things they do well, and then there are other things they don’t. We feel our presentation is at EA Sports quality already and we’re at pre-alpha. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, [we have] commentators for the first time in a tennis product – that’s kind of a natural progression in an authentic sports simulation. Nobody’s done it yet. From a control standpoint, gameplay standpoint, Pro AI, I think we’ve got all the right pieces.”
Grand Slam Tennis 2 will hit stores sometime in 2012. Stay tuned to IGN for more on the game.
