EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis closest thing to the real game

Despite the popularity of the simple, yet addicting, tennis feature in Wii Sports, Nintendo is finally attempting to capitalize with a polished tennis product.

EA’s first venture into the sport, Grand Slam Tennis, is very solid. In fact, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing a sports game on the Wii.

Make sure you pick up the Wii Motion Plus for this one; it’s how the game was meant to be played. With the WMP attached, the game is able to measure the amount of top spin and the direction of the ball based on your wrist movement/follow through. The 1:1 motion isn’t quite as fluid as EA marketing will have you believe, but when you look at the game play compared to Wii Sports Tennis, you’ll quickly forgive the jitters.

But is it isn’t quite so simple to pick up and play. Like the real sport, there is a steep learning curve. Be patient if your intended top spin shots turn into slices. Unfortunately, EA doesn’t guide or instruct you nearly well enough. They offer very few pointers, no swing tutorial, and a less than detailed control guide. For example, I had to learn from a load screen that the side of the Wii remote represents the face of your racquet. A critical piece of information you’d expect to learn in the control guide or in the instruction manual.

The game takes you straight to a practice court when you start the game for the first time, and sadly, it’s a pretty poor first impression. The machine only feeds balls to the middle of the court, which if you know tennis, makes it difficult to hit good angles. Moreover, it took me 30 minutes to an hour to figure out that Wii motion plus wants you to really turn over your wrist at contact to apply desired top spin. A simple low to high motion of your arm is not always enough.

Here’s the important thing to take away: Once learned, the game is smooth, natural, and the best virtual tennis simulation I’ve played.*

The points flow well, at a fast pace, and with marginal technical error. When you miss a shot in Grand Slam tennis, it’s typically because of dumb shot choice or user error – the way any tennis sim should be. There is the occasional calibration error or motion control glitch, but certainly not enough to tarnish the overall experience or the outcome of a match. The nunchuck control should be used for the best game play experience. I found the automated player movement to be clumsy and not as intuitive as you’d like.

And by-the-way, if you take it seriously, you’ll burn far more calories in this game than with EA active or Wii Fit. I found myself actually sitting down during the changeovers for a water break and a mental refocus. Never expected to experience that from a video game!

Other nice elements include official licensing of the four Grand Slams and their show courts, a fairly decent roster of players past and present, and a seamless online mode that pits you against players from around the world.

The downsides of the game lie within the presentation and depth. EA developers typically read Amazon reviews, so hopefully they take note for any future iterations:

*The career mode only features the four Grand Slams. Forget about warm-up tournaments or other ATP events. Compared to the Virtual Tennis series, EA has come up way short here.
*The in-game commentary is virtually non-existent.
*Good luck getting your Created players to look anything like yourself. I love the stylized cartoonish look to the characters, but EA has shown complete lack of effort in the number and diversity of body features. This is 1/100th of Tiger Woods create-a-player.
*The 1:1 is far from perfect. While practice helps, I still frequently give a top spin swing and end up with an odd slice.

Overall, this a solid first edition of a what I hope becomes a staple of the EA Sports franchise. It’s an insanely fun experience. Expect to be a little frustrated at first. When you start ripping topspin winners down the line, however, all frustration will be a distant memory.