Grand Slam Tennis 2 Review (X360)

• Publisher: EA Sports
• Developer: EA Canada
• ESRB Rating: “E" for Everyone
• Genre: Tennis
• Pros: Great gameplay; all 4 Slams; nice presentation; very accessible
• Cons: Bland career mode; awful commentary; Easy mode is stupid easy; no minigames

Features and Modes

Grand Slam Tennis 2 is the only tennis game to feature all four of the Grand Slam events - Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. The roster of real players isn't huge - only 15 men and 8 women - but they are all pretty big names and the mix of current and past tennis greats is pretty solid overall. You can also create your own players either with the in-game editor or upload a picture to take advantage of EA's GameFace system.

Modes include quick exhibition matches, local multiplayer, online multiplayer, training, career, and ESPN Grand Slam Classics mode. The ESPN Grand Slam Classics mode lets you re-create classic moments from past Grand Slams where you start in specific point in the match and you have to complete objectives to win.

Career mode should be the main meat of the single-player experience, but it is ultimately pretty boring. It starts your player out as a lowly ranked, poorly skilled newbie. There are the four Slams, along with a couple of events in between each slam for a total just north of 10 events and each year of your career only takes a couple of hours to play through. You can also choose to train in-between events to raise your stats. The funny and incredibly stupid thing about it all, though, is that you can take your newly created character and win every tournament you enter in your first year even without raising your stats at all. The way the career works is that it gets harder with each year you are on tour. But, because you can win everything you enter the first two or three years of the career before it starts to become a challenge, there is little motivation to keep playing. You've already had a better career than 99% of the real tennis players out there. Despite the career running a full 10 years, it is really only fun the first year or so. Play one year each with a man and a woman and you've literally seen everything the career mode has to offer.

And that is pretty much it. Unlike, say, Virtua Tennis, where there are a ton of tennis-related minigames and fun things to do, Grand Slam Tennis 2 is rather dry. Sure, multiplayer will keep you busy for a while, and the Classics mode is interesting, but there isn't a ton of content here. You can easily play enough to be satisfied with it all in the span of a rental.

Also noteworthy is that the physics of everything is just right so that it is accessible without being too difficult. It isn't exactly the most realistic tennis game, but it is definitely the most fun. The ball doesn't ever go too fast. Your player movement is always just fast enough to get to just about any shot. It makes the game easy to play and keep the ball in bounds, but you also have a lot of deeper controls and options available. It makes the game super accessible and fun for any skill range, but offers plenty of advanced tactics and controls for those that want it.

Another nice touch is how the different surfaces you play on - grass, clay, concrete - all really play very differently from each other. Player movement and momentum are very different between them. Ball physics are different. It keeps the game interesting because the surfaces actually have an impact on how you have to play.

The audio, on the other hand, is more inconsistent. The sound effects on the court are absolutely fantastic, but the commentary is terrible. Grand Slam Tennis 2 is the only tennis game with commentary of any sort, so points there, but John McEnroe and Pat Cash do such a poor job that it starts to grate on you immediately. They repeat the exact same stuff every match.