Strokes In Your Living Room – Grand Slam Tennis 2

I met up with Thomas Singleton, producer for Grand Slam Tennis 2 to get his thoughts on making sports games more accessible, in-game commentary and using the PlayStation Move controller. The game, which is released next month, features all four Grand Slam tournaments, the ability to replay classic matches like Borg vs. McEnroe and a 10-year career mode.

I asked Singleton about making tennis as accessible as possible to console players. He said “We’ve done a disservice to the general public and pushed them away from the gaming market by making things too complex – complex button combinations and modes that are impossible to get through from a navigation stand point when it gets to the UI. Grand Slam Tennis 2 is benefiting from that change in mind-set and bringing the masses into an experience from a pick-up-and-play standpoint.”

I tested out preview of Grand Slam Tennis 2 using a standard PlayStation 3 and a Move controller. From the perspective of someone who wants to feel like they’re playing tennis, the Move controller wins hands-down. The game’s Total Racquet Control system made it easy to perform loads of different shots using either the right stick or tilting and twisting the Move controller. The game was fun to play until I increased the difficulty level to hard and then got absolutely hammered by the AI. Yep, back to the practice courts for me.

I questioned Singleton about the differences between the control methods. “It all depends on how you want to play the game. If you want to sit down and relax on your couch and have a very rewarding, intuitive experience with total racquet control on the right stick, then go for it. If you want to re-enact your childhood and literally perform tennis strokes live in your living room from a gesture standpoint then Move is where it is at.”

The game features commentary from legendary ex-tennis players John McEnroe and Pat Cash. Singleton said “We hire the talent to be the talent and do what they do best and that’s call matches live whether that’s in FIFA, Madden or in this case Grand Slam Tennis 2. So what we did was we set up live matches prerecorded and had them call matches as they would in real life, making sure that we get all the scenarios that we want to make it authentic and sound realistic.”

Lets hope that this approach overcomes the problem of in-game commentary quickly becoming repetitive and stale which has plagued every sports title I’ve played.

Grand Slam Tennis 2 is released on the 10th Feb 2012 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.