EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis Comments by Kristan Reed

Obviously I haven't played this game so have no idea whether the review is accurate or not, but it sounds as if the reviewer is more than a little sour than his assumption that he'd be automatically be awesome at tennis games has been shown up, and is annoyed that he needs to learn some new skills to adapt. IGN acknowledge that there's a large learning curve and it doesn't sound as if this reviewer gave the game a lot of time or was willing to take the time to learn the nuances. Of course I could be wrong, but Eurogamer have been immensely unfair on motion-driven gameplay in Wii games before (I'm looking at you, Deadly Creatures reviewer) so their impatience isn't exactly without patience.

@ Darren.

Glad to teach you something :-)

I am inclined to agree with you - I do have Virtua Tennis 09 on the PS3 which is great, not much of an improvement over VT3 but still great. So yes, I too hope that they keep with the same visual style as I think its ace and would stand out against the others, but - with EA's history of wanting to out tech themselves each year to be the best graphical sports games I cant see them doing it. I think they will go for the full HD life like visuals but - like you I would rather they kept this style

BTW - its "due" in September on the other 2 machines.

I read other reviews before this one and think i will go with the majority verdict on this and get it. I dont realy trust EG on thier Wii reviews at the best of times. I like most others know theres a lot of crap on Wii but too often in the past ive seen EG give a poor review or bypassed giving a review entirely to what i have considered a good game. I dont profess to be an expert but having been a solid gamer since the '80s ive got a fair idea of whats good and whats not. I happen to be useless at football games therefore i wouldnt dare to judge on what football games are good or bad. If you were no good at Grand Slam Tennis Kristan you should have passed it on to someone else.

Kristan Reed - Dismissed

Kristan Reed is probably one of the longest serving and respected reviewers on this site. It would be quite a rarity for him to have got this review so wrong as is being suggested. Having said that, he really doesn't seem to do many Wii reviews...

edit:

About 9 months ago: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/de-blo... 8/10

Kristan Reed, it seems to me that you didn't calibrate the Motion Plus control so that it is behaving so randomly like you mention. If you don't calibrate it right, the shots get all arbitrary, and that is exactly what you're saying happened to you!

IGN has a great review on this game and says that it has really good controls.

It seems like you are being a bit childish in your review: "bu-hoo.. I don't like this game, it is so hard, even in the easiest setting.."

Are you sure you used the Motion Plus correctly.. seems to me that you did not!

Try it again before you give it 5/10

Sincerely Jack

Eurogamer is for grown up only
If not a FPS or xbox360 game the score sucks
I am not a beliver of your site anymore
ign.com is much better

Unfortunately EG is a bit 360 centric.

In their face offs they always say, that damn 4.6 GB install on Ps3. I have both Xbox and Ps3 (and Wii) and I install all games if possible, for 360 to save noise and extend console life, for Ps3 cos I have to. With 320 GB ps3 dont care, with 60 GB I have to delete something (but its quicker install).

Thats not the point, the point is the way EG portrays it. If you take away their slant on things, the information is useful.

So, , for Wii MP, after each shot you have to keep the remote still and horizontal, is that correct ?

Does that means it only tracks certain slow / medium speed movements and can loose it when you flail arms quickly, OR does the game loose its way by stopping tracking sensors at end of every point when it shows the replay ?

If its the former and you can loose calibration by moving too fast, then bring on the Sony wand. Wii MP looks fail to me and agree with EG. And you should not have to hold the remote horizontal and still between every pont really, loose immersion ?

If it looses cal at the end of each point, surely if the software kept tracking the wiiimote then you would only cal when you start ? This is a software issue.

Which one is it, software of deficiency of Wii MP ?

I wonder why Mr. Reed does not comment on some of the mentioned points, here

Cos he knows when to stay out of unsightly battles? ;)
I'm more than willing to wait for other reports from EG people on the controls etc before wading in with personal attacks over someone's opinion. Not that you were doing that :)
/prepares knuckledusters

I've just read on the EA GST forums that the face of the raquet is the left hand side of the Wii Remote, not the buttons as you would normally think.

Apparently this isn't made very clear anywhere in game.

Could this be the reason with the issue with the controls?

you would think it might have some effect...sounds counter intuitive though.

"I've just read on the EA GST forums that the face of the raquet is the left hand side of the Wii Remote, not the buttons as you would normally think.

Apparently this isn't made very clear anywhere in game.

Could this be the reason with the issue with the controls? "

Interesting point. What angle do most people hold the wiimote at? I think i usually have it at about a 45 degree angle between 'buttons on top' and 'buttons on side' unless the game calls for more precise tilting. It sounds as if the 'resting' position might need to be updated on a point by point basis to take your slightly differing standing position for each point into account.

I don't think this is the reviewers problem however. He was complaining about shot placement which suggests issues with timing the swing accurately. Perhaps he got a bit excited at certain points in the rally, tried to play too hard a shot and ended up connecting too early?

I'll place my bet on it just not being a good game and the controls being flawed.

Having actually bought and played the game, I feel this review is fair though perhaps a bit *too kind*.

I've played tennis all my life and have been incredibly excited about the release of this game since I first heard about it. The (clearly rigged) demo video presented by EA led me to believe that we would finally receive a realistic feeling and intuitive tennis video game. Perhaps some day we will, but this is not it. This game's controls are terrible. Simply terrible.

The swing motion does not at all work as would be expected and the 1:1 movement to on-screen action claims are laughable. In the demo video, the producer shows off the ability to bob up and down as McEnroe before serving. I attempted the same and it does not work at all like that unless you figure out the magical distances that the game will let you move your WMP up and down. Otherwise, you'll get choppiness or nothing. Twisting the wrist to change the racket angle is sorta represented on-screen, but the animations are so fickle and the results are so unexpected that it appears to be nothing more than a gimmick.

I put a good hour into hitting balls against the ball machine trying all sorts of ground strokes. By the end, I had given up and was just trying to consistently get the right spins! It's that bad! This is something I can do with a real tennis racket in my sleep, however with this game it feels completely random. The most extreme attempts to generate topspin by angling the racket "face" forward and swing low to high would often still end up on-screen as slice. Sometimes pulling the racket back to begin a forehand stroke led to the on-screen character setting up for a backhand. Sometimes it performed a quick forehand stroke, completely whiffing early. Sometimes it did nothing. It led me on more than one occasion to wonder if my WMP was broken. Calibrating the WMP changed nothing and judging by what I've seen so far in Tiger 10 it's working just fine.

After getting thoroughly disappointed by the WMP, I tried the game with the standard Wiimote. Lo and behold, it's easier to more consistently get the correct topspin and slice than it is with the WMP! It's not tennis, but it's not just pure randomness.

Anyway, I'm rambling. But anyone who disagrees with this review either hasn't played the game or doesn't know how to play tennis. I'm about to give up on my Wii.

Any ideas about the theory of having to hold the wiimote the 'right way'?
It might be a little early to dismiss wmp on its display in this though, then again, maybe not ;)

>Eurogamer have been immensely unfair on motion-driven gameplay in Wii games before


Yeah.. i still remember the resi 4 review - with the "unplayable" controls!!!!

"Eurogamer is for grown up only "

replace "grown up" with "teenage boys" and i'll agree with you

I disagree with the reviewer on the controls. They are reliable, its the player that is unreliable. I'll preface this with the fact that I have only played with the nunchuk, which admittedly takes out some of the guess work on if your toon will line up for a backhand or forehand, but add another difficulty factor. I bought the game today and spent at least 3 hours on the practice court just figuring out how exactly aiming worked. It was frustrating at first because I could hit cross court shots easily but I could not for the life of me figure out how to hit shots down the line. But by the end I was hitting shots wherever I wanted to, including touch slice drop shots at the net without using the drop shot button.
The only reason I hit shots that didn't go where I wanted them to was because of poor execution. This game takes a lot of skill. Not only do you have to point your follow through in the direction you want the ball to go, but you have to time your swing right too. If you point your follow through way to the left to hit a cross court forehand (right hander) but swing when the ball is almost passed you it will go straight, not left. On the other hand, if you swing too early the ball will go too far left and out. Needless to say, you will miss time shots and miss aim some shots and the ball will not go where you intended it to go. Its unreliableness is linked to player skill not Motion Plus malfunction.
The game also has a lot of strategy, like real tennis. My first couple games I lost to the computer on easy from mostly hitting balls out trying to hit winners and not setting up my opponent. As my aim improved (just going for less risky shots mostly) and my strategy improved I started to win. After about 4 games I got the hang of my serve and volley game and I won the Australian Open winning every match 3-0 on medium setting. Then I tried online. I played 5 ranked games (5-0, name is SlyBoots, add/challenge me!) online and so far I'm having a blast. Online has been smooth with no lag and fast connect/join times.

5/10 is a terrible score and isn't representative of the quality and fun of the game. Maybe it is 5/10 if you don't figure out the controls or simply can't execute shots reliably enough for it to be fun, but for those with decent hand-eye coordination and a willingness to practice it is a great game.

I'm quite impressed with this game & Motion + it's well worth a try.

I dissagree with warp2.

WARP2 Quote
"Anyway, I'm rambling. But anyone who disagrees with this review either hasn't played the game or doesn't know how to play tennis. I'm about to give up on my Wii."

I dissagree with both of these comments. I own it, and have been playing it all day so theres one of your suggestions gone, and secondly, I can play tennis as luckily I have one of the UK's top tennis coaches (who has written and published 14 books on tennis coaching) as an Uncle. Although I am hardly pro standard haha

No doubt your points are valid for what YOU have found, as everyones points are valid buy saying if anyone dissagrees with you hasnt played it or doesnt know how to play tennis is wrong. Just becasue you found the game not to your liking does not been its a rubbish game. It means its not for you. As we are all individuals then people should make their minds up.

We have to remeber here - IT IS A GAME AND NOT A SIMULATION. Admittedly it has been adertised as 1:1 which is maybe inaccurate and yes, serving is a bit strange. But you have to remember is still works a lot BETTER than any other games available. Sure I have VT2009 on my PS3, and wont say either are better as its like comparing 50 Cent to Halo. Just cos they are FPS they are totally different. Same with these.

Grand Slam Tennis is a fun and varied reperesentation of the game. I have no doubt some tennis players will say its flawed and rubbish - but then, most people are NOT tennis players. We are gamers, and alas, the game is great fun, works much better than I thought it would, althought slightly dissolusioned about the 1:1. However we must also bear in mind it is the first game to use this and the tech and games to go with it will be firther refined as time goes on.

Do no be put of buying it and enjoying it from this review as its the worst ive seen, most others are complimentry. People like warp2 make valid points but i feel they are forgetting the main point - its still just a game and does offer INFINATELY more playability and accuracy than anything else the wii has to offer right now.

So I played this game since yesterday. It is the best Tennis game out there (perhaps until Virtua Tennis for Wii comes out?). The controls works fine, yes they have a learning curve, but what did you expect from a realistic Tennis game?

The eurogamer test of this game is a shame. No more words to say about that.

I think the point is: can anyone who has bought the game and played it, replicate (or come anywhere close to replicating) what the guy in the promo video was showing off as being possible? I certainly can't. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it is the most blatant example of false advertising I can recal witnessing in the games industry. (The dude in the video is going straight to hell.)

I spent a couple of hours trying to "learn" the controls, regardless, with varying degrees of success. I wil say this much - when this game works, it is the most exhilirating tennis game I've ever played. The other 80% of the time however, it is sheer frustration. In the end, what I found works best is simply flicking the remote right to left/left to right - which by the way works equally well with or without the motion+ attachment.

milkyjoe, it sounds like you're missing the point. The game is advertised as 1:1 with a true intuitive tennis feel. However, it is anything *but* that and, as such, should receive a bad review. In order to play well, you have to figure out HOW THE GAME WORKS rather than how a tennis swing works. If you try to play this game like you're playing tennis, it will not work. Sure, that's ok for people who aren't tennis players, but for those of us who *do* play the game and know how a swing works, it's a joke. I don't know who the target audience is for this game, but I would think that it would be tennis fans.

As Gabrien said:

"In the end, what I found works best is simply flicking the remote right to left/left to right - which by the way works equally well with or without the motion+ attachment."

That is absolutely right. Just like with most Wii games, the motion control turns out to simply be a gimmick. In this case, EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis is still pretty fun as a party game, but not as an actual tennis game.

A 5/10 score is completely appropriate. Reviewers should not be in the business of giving high scores just because a game is different or because the game system's fans like high numbers.

The rest of the review scores are meaningless if the reviewers feel obligated to post inflated review scores to avoid the wrath of fanboys. That's the problem, in general, with review scores. Not every game can be a 7 or 8 and a 5 in one rushed-out game does not invalidate the console or the WMP, itself.

Quite honestly, I don't care what any sites think of the game. I can only judge the game by my own standards and expectations and, in this case, I feel eurogamer has done a better and fairer job of presenting the game than any other reviewer.

Your mileage may vary.

Played it. Hated it, could NOT get the hang of the controls. No forehand possible at all. Took it to a mates house to play and he was fine. Turns out you have to keep backswing to a minimum and kind of sweep the remote forward or to the left or right across your body. Is that like proper tennis????

Plenty of Youtube footage (from your common garden Wii owners) shows them twisting the racket and doing all sorts with it, so I'm not sure why people believe the EA demo was 'faked'.

I read this review and was really disappointed. I'd been waiting ages for this game. Knowing that EG is normally really stingy with reviews I went and bought it anyway. After 20 minutes of smacking the ball OUT and wide I thought I should have listened to EG.

HOWEVER...

When a loading screen came up stating that the SIDE of the Wiimote was the face of the racket not the FRONT as it wiisports everything changed, I was hitting cross court shots, down the line anything I wanted! I honestly believe the reviewer didn't know how to hold the wiimote properly. This is at least a 8/10 game, the reviewer I'm SURE didn't know what he was doing and I'd dare him to say so!

It does take a bit of getting used to, but I've had very few problems with this game's controls so far, and after one defeat won my next three matches on Medium difficulty.

What's odd is that MotionPlus seems to work better in matches than on the Practice court, although admittedly I haven't gone back to the latter since starting the game.

I think this review is a good indicator of how difficult reviews for MotionPlus-enhanced games are going to be. Kristan clearly didn't get on with the controls, but having played the game for just a couple of hours, I've barely experienced any of the problems he had. Very odd.

Actually, I figured out why controls seem like they're working better in match than on the practice court. What appears to happen is, the game does not properly register you swinging back until the ball is heading toward you. On the practice court, since we know where the ball will be coming, we tend to swing back early in anticipation (before the ball has left the ball machine) and that messes it up. In a match, since we have less time to swing and tend to wait to see in which direction the ball will be coming, we swing later.

I have gotten on with the controls much better in the last couple of days, however as mentioned in a previous post, "flicking" the remote left and right is what appears to work best - not tennis, and not what was advertised. Still having fun online with this though.

Another way around the inconsistent controls is to get back to the starting position (i.e. the position you hold the racquet in before the opponent serves) as quickly as you can after playing a stroke.

If you take a swing and don't go back to the normal starting position quickly enough the game reads the last position you held the remote in (i.e. the end of your previous swing) as the starting point for the new swing, so when you then try to move the remote back to the original position it counts it as a swing. I'm sure this makes little sense but it works for me! That and making sure the side of the remote is thought of as the face and holding the remote pretty still between points... all of which is barely explained in-game!

Wii owners! Beware of Eurogamer scores!
Seriously, if you go to metacritic.com you can see that this site is almost ALWAYS the site that gives the lowest scores on Wii games.
I have long since stopped using them as a reference and it is more then just a little bit obvious to anybody who uses Metacritic scores as theyre main reference to quality that Eurogamer might just be one of the most unfair sites when it comes to Wii games.

fwiw although I think GST is a high 7 or maybe even an 8. However, the lack of a decent in-game explanation on how to use the controls properly kind of makes arguments about the review scores a bit loose. I can understand if people don't get it, think it's rubbish and, accordingly, rate it low. EA really need to make the issues about the resetting and proper use of the controller clearer imo.

Bought this yesterday and no way is it a 5.

Although not exact 1:1, motion+ really does work well enough for a great game of tennis. The nunchuck isn't recommended to start with, but I found the game played so much more naturally when used to control players position. If the wiimote is held correctly I found I only occasionally missed the ball, although that was largely down to selecting the wrong shot side when not quite in position. I've just completed my first online game and it was hugely entertaining.

Only shame is the need to use buttons for drop and lob. I guess increasing the shot power sensitivity to include these would make the game too challenging.
The cartoony the graphics suit the game well given the lack of Wii HD. The sfx really adds atmosphere dropping to a hush and then building up in the excitement.

Don't be put off by the 5, that score is nonsense. Perhaps the VT advertising is a factor here?

Looks like this is being looked at again, and good job too. This game is streets ahead of Virtua Tennis on the Wii once you get over the learning curve. This deserves a score of 8+ imo, the 72 Metascore doesn't do this game justice thanks to some reviewers not taking enough time to learn how to play the game.