So the game launched initially in Jan 2020 and was developed by Big Ant Studios. With its primary focus being the Australian Open its evident it holds the official licenses from it. Its Playable on the common four platforms including the Nintendo Switch. I like Tennis as a Sport and I love playing it too socially so I am very much passionately invested in anything Tennis related. The last Tennis game I owned was on PS3 and that was Grand Slam Tennis 2 (released 2012). Lets have a look at this one, here and there I shall compare it to Grand Slam Tennis 2 which I think was a really good Tennis game but not perfect though.
First impressions are the menu, for me its not attractive and feels limited. For example and this based on as far as I played, you can only play certain modes likes doubles after having either deleted a save file from your ongoing or completed match. My guess is since the game has a really good saving system (it saves your ongoing match and you can always hope back in whenever you want) having too many game saves might affect the game from a technical point of view because its sort of saving a match in progress, to give you an idea of this save system imagine playing FIFA and you go out of the match and comeback where you were. But that's just me thumb sucking and guess working as I don't know why they chose this direction. So overall the menu isn't compelling and attractive but has its own pros whereby you can fully see the Tennis star you are choosing pretty cool. The other thing I did not like is there is a few current Tennis stars, the legends are missing a thing Grand Slam Tennis 2 had in bulk.
Graphics and gameplay
Moving on to the next aspect which is graphics. The visuals are fine but I get the sense that more could be done because unlike other sports games like FIFA, NHL, F1 etc. Tennis focusses on renowned stars and they are a few of them in comparison to other games as a result my assumption is face scans, motion capture etc. should be easier giving more room to focus and produce even greater visuals and gameplay. I don't want to sound unreasonable and selfish because perhaps the reason why this occurs is that some studios are smaller than others so to obtain licenses and all the work that goes into it must mean or need a lot of stake holder big budget backup. Once again my hunch. So overall you will see that this is for example Nadal however it is not far from Grand Slam Tennis 2 PS3 and Xbox 360 graphics. There is no big difference to be honest to some extent I felt they are on par.
Lastly the gameplay. I like it but it needs some more work. Its fun and relaxing more so contributed by my love for the Sport. From a nitpicking perspective I think the aiming cursor whereby you direct your shot to land at is a bit tedious because while focusing on moving the player you also have to consider where the ball is to lend and the more you raise the difficulty the more the cursor becomes a grind however there are some custom ways within the games menu to try get by this. Another thing I didn't like is a weird occurrence in doubles match and this happens also with Grand Slam Tennis 2. There is this what I call "pinball effect" especially if you are the player closer to the net and somehow you can be obscured from returning the ball back, pretty weird to even explain but you will it notice a lot when you have a doubles partner as an AI. This makes the doubles experience a little on the clumsy side.
Overall its a fair game with much more needed to be done, I promise to checkout Tennis World Tour 2 and share my thoughts on it with you. I hope its a better game, I haven't played it yet but will see. Tennis video games need more work to be honest because much can be achieved, there is a lot of potential in this sport segment genre. I would like to see better visuals and key changes on gameplay dynamics.
For now that's it and have a blast, cheers.
I find it difficult to play these games