Negative Gamer Review: EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis (Wii)

You can look at this like part one of a two part review of the new bolt on bit for the Wii; the MotionPlus. What strikes me as weird for this new, soon to be essential, bit of kit is that the first three games to come out that use it are third party games. Rather than forever colour everyone’s impressions of the hardware by using their own perfect game (Wii Sports Resort) to advertise it has instead been left to EA Sports and Sega to show off to early adopters through Virtua Tennis 2009, Tiger Woods 10 and new franchise Grand Slam Tennis. It’s a little weird for Nintendo to let control out of their hands but also a rather refreshing vote of confidence in their third parties.

So our focus is on Grand Slam Tennis, a new avenue for EA Sports and some welcome competition in the tennis game space for both Sega’s Virtua Tennis and 2k Sports’ Top Spin franchises. Included are pretty much all the current tennis pros anyone cares about such as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, both Williams sisters and British/Scottish-depending-on-whether-he’s-winning-or-not Andy Murray alongside old hands like John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Pat Cash. Mr Cash also provides the commentary, which makes for some surreal moments when playing with or against him. The 4 grand slam tournaments (Austrailian, French, US Opens and Wimbledon) are also licenced along with their respective stadia. There’s quite a bit there really.

You Cannot Be Serious!

First thing you’ll do when turning on the game is select left or right handed and then you’ll be given a quick rundown of the controls and thrown onto the practice court to face the ball machine. This is where you’ll spend most of your time cursing your idiot player never really getting into position properly and sending every ball sent your way flying out of the court. The controls seem fairly simple, swing as expected for forehand and backhand, swing up to add top spin and swing downwards to slice. A and B perform lobs and drop-shots if you’re feeling sassy and player positioning is handled automatically based on which direction your backswing goes. Unfortunately this auto-positioning is cranky at best and often fails to put you on the right side for the point winning shot you planned to make forcing you to perform a quick readjustment and either send the ball out or allow your opponent back into it. This never fails to get annoying and is an immediate fault pointed at both software for being tetchy and hardware for being a bit rubbish.

Another fault (double fault?) with the controls is that while the game tells you to make smooth swings and to follow through it quickly becomes apparent that following through will send the ball sailing out of play. This is explained by another quirk of the controls whereby the timing of the shot determines direction, it’s the follow through that affects the power put onto the shot, therefore it’s often the short and jerky shots that will win points. Useful for those with tired arms, but damaging to a game that claims the closest thing to swinging a real racquet. The controls do start to get more natural and annoy less as time goes on and plugging in a Nunchuk quickly eliminates positioning problems. But for a game that’s supposed to be advertising this new hardware it’s not nice when things get annoying in the tutorial.

Once you’ve quit the practice court and head to the main menu there are a fair few options. Play Now offers the usual array of exhibition options with singles and doubles available on all courts and Fitness offers a hopelessly tacked on calorie counter that just begs to be mocked. Fitness involves picking a calorie count between 1,000 and 5,000 then a time frame within which to burn that number from 1-6 weeks. The post-match menu offers a calories burnt graph which most people will look at a few times before dismissing the whole pathetic ‘me too’ idea. Hell EA already have their Wii Fit clone, this wasn’t necessary.

Game, Broken TV Set and Match

The bulk of your time will be spent in the other 2 modes, the first of which is the Grand Slam (what we old types would call a Career) mode. In this mode you create a player using a rather disappointingly slim creator that doesn’t even come close to what we’ve come to expect from EA Sports’ creation tools. Then you take your player out onto the circuit with the aim being to train your player through matches and mini-games and hopefully win the 4 Grand Slam tournaments. The 4 tournaments are nicely padded out through the need to play an exhibition match against a rubbish player, a match against a tennis pro to win abilities and improve your player and a mini-game for no apparent reason. Winning all 3 pre-tournament challenges unlocks another optional challenge against another pro for another, better, ability before you’re finally unleashed into the tournament proper. In truth these bits aren’t really that much fun when you just want to be playing tournament tennis.

Tournaments consist of 5 rounds conducted under the usual knockout rules and the set and game options you’ve chosen (one 3-game set is the default) with new gear unlocked for character creation for every win. Difficulty seemed rather inconsistent in my first tournament, I breezed past John McEnroe in the first round before being run to the limit by Pat Cash, stomping Andy Murray and finally being taken down in the Semi Finals. There is very little sense of progression in the Grand Slam mode really beyond the courts you play on gradually getting more of the paper thin cut-out spectators I thought we’d left behind after the PS2. Occasionally your star rating will increase as you win points and abilities are unlocked through wins in pro challenges but there are no constant stat upgrades or noticeable changes in your player’s performance. This makes it quite hard to want to persevere with the career, especially when it’s possible to stomp the likes of 5-star rated Federer and Sampras using your rubbish 1-star player.

Come On Tim!!

Finally the big thing, how much of a difference does the MotionPlus make? Well since Grand Slam Tennis is bundled with one MotionPlus it doesn’t really matter as far as the purchase goes but this is one of the few games which has MotionPlus as an OPTION. All the other big MP compatible games require it to play so this is potentially our only chance to see how big it’s difference is. The answer, surprisingly not much. I actually found playing without the Nunchuk a lot easier without the MotionPlus which is a very bad thing as far as the device’s worth is concerned. More delicate (read: fiddly) controls can be performed with the MP attached but I would advise against clicking in the device as soon as it’s out of the box.

Some Other Things

• Difficulty in Grand Slam mode can be changed after every match, nice if you’re getting bored of destroying everyone.
• Graphics use the age-old Wii trick of being slightly exaggerated and cartoonish while still looking faintly realistic, it kinda works but there are plenty of rough edges around even with a component cable.
• Turn the sound off. Pat Cash’s commentary is ridiculously limited, I was hearing repeat phrases before the end of my first match.
• If you’re going to play local multiplayer, take the Wii outside. Even my spacious living room struggled once me and my roommate were fully kitted up with Wiimotes and nunchuks.

Grand Slam Tennis is an immensely frustrating game with a bad sense of progression and some very dodgy controls. However those who persevere will find a very solid and fun tennis game underneath the failings. A good game, but one that requires a lot of patience and work to get the most out of. MotionPlus does little to enhance the game, usually doing its bit to make things more frustrating.

You should buy this game if…
…you want a proper tennis game for the Wii.

Final Score

While Grand Slam Tennis is annoying as hell to begin with, those problems fade away as you play the game more. However those without patience should steer clear.

(What does this score mean?)