EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis

Review from Starks - Thursday, 06 August 2009 @ 10:57am

Tennis is one of those funny games; When watching it as a gamer, I can’t help but believe that the game is really just a game of Pong. In fact, as I watched Lleyton Hewitt play some nuffy the other night, my mind transformed into CGA and all I could see was this:

Ping, Pong, Ping, Pong, Ping, Pong...

Split second, I had pumped up my old 386 and loaded up Pong – The game that saw me fail 3rd Grade. At least I think it was Pong. Either that or Alley Cat. Meh, either or.

Anyways. I picked up EA’s Grand Slam Tennis, and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Nintendo’s Wii Sports Tennis was a pretty awesome game and a lot of fun. The one thing it was probably lacking was a little bit of seriousness. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting EA’s title to ‘light my fire’. This was the first of my negative assumptions.

The game opens up reasonably well. The one thing I noticed is it didn’t require a Wii Code toplay multiplayer. A bit of Wiki research confirmed this, and my mind suddenly went into neutral mode. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad after all. I loaded up the game and called over my housemates for what we believed would be a couple of games.

Four and a half hours later and with my arm begging to be detached, I went to be a fairly happy chappy. And tired. And with a very sore arm. *cough* No, not from that, dirty-minded reader. I had a great case of tennis elbow.

C'mon, it's friggen out you blind-as-a-bat ref!! Get some bloody glasses!

So… what is good about this game? Frankly, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, yet build in a serious manner on the success of Wii Tennis. The controls themselves were relatively complex and allowed full versatility of shots that most tennis players utilize. This was the first appeal to me; Top spin, lob, back spin, curve, net shots, hard shots, soft shots – You name it, you can do it. The game adequately represents the repertoire of a tennis player. And not only that, but allows the player to, with a small amount of practice, perform such maneuvers.

Tick.

The second is the players themselves. Each player has his own skill set and class; Back court defender, net attacker – All that type of crap that a true tennis professional would care about but casual observers point to and go ‘Why did you do that you stupid lump!! Of COURSE he’s going to lob it over your head when you’re at the net!’ Not only this, but each player has a somewhat humorous, caricatured look – Seriously, Lleyton Hewitt looks like the 15 year old he is. Sadly, Bec is nowhere to be seen.

YES! Rafael Nadal is off sick with the flu. This comp is mine, biatches!

Playing the game, there were a great many options and replay ability is one the game is not short on. Grand Slams, training regimes for your Wii fitness, goal-based mini games and a shirt load of multiplayer activities means you will be definitely occupied for a while. The real interest, for me anyway, was the Grand Slam; Emulating Rod Laver as Rafael Nadal is something that I really enjoyed.

Tick

Probably the only thing that annoyed me was the camera angles. Seriously, EA should know better than this. Dividing the screen vertically, and showing poor angles of the court is a really, really, really stupid idea. Like, really. Dumb move. Yet, it’s there. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad on a wide screen TV where you got another 15 inches either side, but for poor-asses like myself who play their games on a 51cm CRT, vertical splits and no choice to change it to horizontal despite the game itself being horizontal in nature, is defintately an experience that I didn’t want to go through.

Cross.

Over all, EA Tennis Grand Slam is a good title. Solid, dependable and great to play with friends that has enough in it to keep your attention on your own. I would definitely recommend it for people who enjoy their tennis a little more seriously than Wii Tennis.

Ugh! Man, mens grunting in tennis just isn't as cool as womens grunting...

Pros

Fairly good visually, great gameplay and some excellent variety for multiplayer.

Cons

Poor vertical split, not enough different players, no referee's to scream at.