Wii Review: Grand Slam Tennis

Sports games on the Wii have come a long way since all of us became enamored with Wii Sports almost three years ago. With a disregard of what you looked like swinging a white stick in your living room and a few acute flicks of your wrist, you were skillfully battling family and friends in a number of often hilarious and competitive matches.

Recently released from EA Sports is Grand Slam Tennis, a game that will make Wii Sports tennis seem like Pong on your old Atari 2600 system. And, yes, there have been notable entries in the tennis game market that have come closer to the real thing like Virtua Tennis 2009, but GST makes us wannabe tennis stars feel closer than ever to the excitement of the pro game.

Developer EA Canada made sure that this title differentiated itself from earlier entries by offering the realest tennis experience one can get on the Wii. And while you certainly won’t be shuffling 27 feet left and right in your living room, the game focuses on racket control to simulate the real thing. GST takes advantage of the Wii Motion Plus attachment to give you much more precise control of your serves and volleys than other games.

And when I say the game is more real, I probably should also mention that it’s similarly more difficult. You may have been the Andre Agassi of Wii Sports Tennis, but leave your ego at the door when playing this one because it’s quiet difficult to master. Simple volleying won’t work as the computer opponents typically know how to “work” you, slamming shots right past your racket or surgically dropping other shots out of reach. You actually may be discouraged after firing up the game the first time as you quickly realize that it’s not very ‘fun’ to lose.  What would’ve helped is a much more robust tutorial that shows a new gamer the ropes. Instead, you’re able to hit balls fired from a machine, with a limited set of options.

Further, with Wii-Motion plus enabled, you may find that your slap-happy tennis ways on Wii Sports will need some calibrating. It’s very easy to overreact and exaggerate your movements, actions that could easily result in a ball that lands out of bounds. Call me a terrible tennis player, but it took several matches before I was able to be even resemble a formidable opponent against the computer player.

But just like most things that have a steep learning curve, Grand Slam Tennis has a great payoff as developer EA Canada put some seriously nice touches on the game to add to its realism. One of the best features of the game is the flexibility in who you can play as. GST offers up a myriad of past  and present tennis stars. Control the Williams sisters or lace up your shoes as John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg or Chris Evert. In fact, the game comes with 23 total players, 11 retired and 12 current greats.

If that set of options doesn’t suit your fancy, then create and play as your own custom player. As with most EA Sports games, you can customize your new player, choosing his or her appearance, clothing and playing styles. Your character can start off as relatively skill-less. The only way to beef up his/her tennis skills is to beat some of the game’s professional players. Again, this is no easy task as you will really have develop a playing style that allows you to drop in an inbounds and unreturned volley.

Another plus are the licensed Grand Slam tennis courts. Not since the Top Spin series have the Wimbledon courts been featured in a video game.  GST also features the U.S. Open, the French Open and the Australian Open.

Of course, this is the Wii, so don’t expect stunning, revolutionary graphics as the optics just suffice. In typical Wii fashion, everything is stylized. The courts look close enough to their real life counterparts and the professional players are rendered in a cartoony fashion. But, it’s ok; they resemble your favorite tennis greats enough for you to know it’s them.

The game really shines in its multiplayer mode. Missing from 2KSports Top Spin 3 was an online multiplayer mode and career mode. EA made sure this game had both of those.  You can hop online and play anyone in both ranked and unranked matches. And if that’s not your sort of thing, you can rock the computer in the Grand Slam career mode, taking your player and improving his or her skills so that you can compete for the trophies and prize money.

Some added bonuses are the ability to track fitness metrics like the amount of calories that you have burned. Another great touch, especially given the likelihood that you will pull this game out for friends, is the Party Mode. When your dinner party gets sick of playing tennis with the normal rules, you can switch over to this set of mini-games that provide a new spin on the game. For example, you can choose a mode in which drop-shot and lob scores are worth double the points.

It’s pretty much all here in this game: the tennis greats, the familiar Grand Slam stadiums, the realistic (and more difficult) gameplay. Grand Slam Tennis is as good as it gets for tennis on the Wii and you’ll want to play it again and again (once the steep learning curve is behind you).

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