Grand Slam Tennis 2

[emate007]

sorry, but to whom? 3.5 tennis fans around the world?

GST one was a fantastic game. Great engine. You need to look past the graphics.

I hardly think EA would want to waste time making a terrible game that will not sell when entering a New market. If anything, this will be their first and only shot. They will give it their semi-best and if it works - franchise is born and then money making starts. If it doesn't work - they are out.

In business, your first shot is always your best shot.

Ignorance.

before everyone gets SUPER SUPER excited lets be realistic:

1) we still havent seen actual gameplay, folks. those are all cut scenes in the trailer. cut scenes always look nice. actual gameplay could pale in comparison.

2) EA GS 1 had some pretty arcade-looking gameplay so what makes you think there will be some huge leap forward? EA doesnt say sim gameplay, it shows you that they bought the rights for all the grand slams.

3) as an avid player of other EA games ill be the first to say that EA can majorly disappoint true fans of a sport. they do in football, in baseball, in basketball, in just about every sport except hockey

so lets be realistic. no reason to get excited until we see actual gameplay.

Wisdom.

Any questions after witnessing that laughable gameplay in the demo?

GS2 is nothing but fluff marketed to casual, unsophisticated "fans" of tennis. Move along...

I haven't tried the demo, but the game looks pretty bad. And reviews from ITST players have been mediocre at best.

But djarvik had it right, this was EA's shot at taking over the (relatively small) tennis market. If the game is crap, they probably won't try again for many years.

Stop feeling so smug about a tennis game sucking, everybody loses in this case.

[Julius Jackson]

sorry, but to whom? 3.5 tennis fans around the world?

GST one was a fantastic game. Great engine. You need to look past the graphics.

I hardly think EA would want to waste time making a terrible game that will not sell when entering a New market. If anything, this will be their first and only shot. They will give it their semi-best and if it works - franchise is born and then money making starts. If it doesn't work - they are out.

In business, your first shot is always your best shot.

Ignorance.

before everyone gets SUPER SUPER excited lets be realistic:

1) we still havent seen actual gameplay, folks. those are all cut scenes in the trailer. cut scenes always look nice. actual gameplay could pale in comparison.

2) EA GS 1 had some pretty arcade-looking gameplay so what makes you think there will be some huge leap forward? EA doesnt say sim gameplay, it shows you that they bought the rights for all the grand slams.

3) as an avid player of other EA games ill be the first to say that EA can majorly disappoint true fans of a sport. they do in football, in baseball, in basketball, in just about every sport except hockey

so lets be realistic. no reason to get excited until we see actual gameplay.

Wisdom.

Any questions after witnessing that laughable gameplay in the demo?

GS2 is nothing but fluff marketed to casual, unsophisticated "fans" of tennis. Move along...

I haven't tried the demo, but the game looks pretty bad. And reviews from ITST players have been mediocre at best.

But djarvik had it right, this was EA's shot at taking over the (relatively small) tennis market. If the game is crap, they probably won't try again for many years.

Stop feeling so smug about a tennis game sucking, everybody loses in this case.

not necessarily smug....just dont get why everyone got so prematurely enthralled by GS2 based on some cut scenes

[ILuvBillVal]

One of my biggest problems not only about this game, but tennis games in general is a lack of depth from all angles. You look at other sports titles these big companies put out, and they have deep career and dynasty modes with financial management situations as well as personnel related situations. They have rosters complete with EVERY player in the league. They feature lots of online options even sometimes online careers.

Then you get a tennis game. If you're lucky you get 20 players. You get an extremely linear career mode at best that feels more like a chore than a game. You get some decent hosted online gameplay but it really doesn't even shine until you create something like ITST and make it much more relevant. You wonder where all the extra space and coding goes in the game compared to other titles. Sometimes there is a HUGE variety of created player options but more often than not it just feels like something is left out one way or another.

[o Sinna o]

PRO AI System - Grand Slam Tennis Producer Video 3

http://www.gamespot.com/grand-slam-tenn ... 3-6349348/

[VillaJ100]

One of my biggest problems not only about this game, but tennis games in general is a lack of depth from all angles. You look at other sports titles these big companies put out, and they have deep career and dynasty modes with financial management situations as well as personnel related situations. They have rosters complete with EVERY player in the league. They feature lots of online options even sometimes online careers.

Then you get a tennis game. If you're lucky you get 20 players. You get an extremely linear career mode at best that feels more like a chore than a game. You get some decent hosted online gameplay but it really doesn't even shine until you create something like ITST and make it much more relevant. You wonder where all the extra space and coding goes in the game compared to other titles. Sometimes there is a HUGE variety of created player options but more often than not it just feels like something is left out one way or another.

[VillaJ100]

One of my biggest problems not only about this game, but tennis games in general is a lack of depth from all angles. You look at other sports titles these big companies put out, and they have deep career and dynasty modes with financial management situations as well as personnel related situations. They have rosters complete with EVERY player in the league. They feature lots of online options even sometimes online careers.

Then you get a tennis game. If you're lucky you get 20 players. You get an extremely linear career mode at best that feels more like a chore than a game. You get some decent hosted online gameplay but it really doesn't even shine until you create something like ITST and make it much more relevant. You wonder where all the extra space and coding goes in the game compared to other titles. Sometimes there is a HUGE variety of created player options but more often than not it just feels like something is left out one way or another.

I agree. A sneaky and underhand move would be to make a deal with the ATP. The ASSOCIATION OF TENNIS PROFESSIONALS. Which then they could use any player they wanted, if they played on the ATP tour. But instead they all have individual image rights. This is fair enough for sponsorship but I think with regards to a tennis game it should be fine. You need a game fully affiliated with the ATP, like FIFA is. Otherwise it would just be EA sports football 2012. A affiliated game would be like ATP pro tennis 2012. But we don't have this.

[edlglide]

One of my biggest problems not only about this game, but tennis games in general is a lack of depth from all angles. You look at other sports titles these big companies put out, and they have deep career and dynasty modes with financial management situations as well as personnel related situations. They have rosters complete with EVERY player in the league. They feature lots of online options even sometimes online careers.

Then you get a tennis game. If you're lucky you get 20 players. You get an extremely linear career mode at best that feels more like a chore than a game. You get some decent hosted online gameplay but it really doesn't even shine until you create something like ITST and make it much more relevant. You wonder where all the extra space and coding goes in the game compared to other titles. Sometimes there is a HUGE variety of created player options but more often than not it just feels like something is left out one way or another.

Golf games suffer from the exact same problem -- in fact, it's even worse in golf, because not only do they usually only have 10-15 licensed pros, but they also generally only have 7 or 8 real courses. But that's a problem that golf games will never be able to overcome, since the only way to get real courses is to individually license them, and then I'm sure it takes a lot of time/effort to successfully render even one course in the game.

A few thoughts about that for tennis games (which also apply to golf):

I think they just don't have the resources/time to put in more than 15-20 players. I'm sure it's not as hard as recreating an entire 18 hole golf course and its surroundings, but I would imagine rendering a single player accurately with all their specific animations would take a lot of time. In hockey, football, soccer, and basketball, a player's individual likeness doesn't really need to be perfect since it's a team sport and so there are more players to focus on.

With that said, FIFA and the NBA 2k games do a pretty remarkable job capturing all the stars, and do well with the other players too. But those games also sell WAY more copies than tennis or golf games, so the companies are willing to spend more money/put more staff at work to make that happen.

I'm also not sure that licensing the ATP would actually give them the rights to all the individual player likenesses the way licensing the player unions in other sports does (golf doesn't even have any kind of union, so there's nothing to go with there). I don't know the specifics of the ATP, but it's definitely a different entity than the individual player unions. It may not even be possible to simply purchase a license that gives likeness rights for every single person in the ATP.

I agree completely about the career modes though. Tennis and golf games both have incredibly weak, bare bones career modes that don't compare to what you can get in other sports. I think it's partially a function of them being unsure of what to do -- it's easier in a team sport with contracts, trades, etc. Since players in both golf and tennis are essentially independent contractors, it requires a completely different approach....and again, they may not be willing to put in the time/money for it when the games don't sell that much.

[Nardy2010]

Actually the licensing thing is a myth and i'll reference you 2 recent tennis games: Konami's WTA tennis and Microids?? Master's Series Tennis!!

Konami produced 2 WTA licensed tennis games for the PS2 and both games had 20 different women tennis stars and the only ones missing from either game were only because they were already exclusively tied into another company(Anna Kournikova whom had a deal with Namco and Venus Williams whom had a deal with Sega).

The microids developed game had the rights to use every single masters event and even had morning,day and night selections for each!

This obviously tells me that these companies are being a tad bit lazy when it comes to the rosters and i think it's more to do with the motion capturing/animation process than a funding issue/licensing rights problem........

[djarvik]

Judging by the recent animation failures from both TS4 and GST2 - I think it is the exact opposite. They chase and market the roster/licenses more then they give care to a proper game play. It is quite evident in the way it is being marketed.

[o Sinna o]

Judging by the recent animation failures from both TS4 and GST2 - I think it is the exact opposite. They chase and market the roster/licenses more then they give care to a proper game play. It is quite evident in the way it is being marketed.

true

[Nardy2010]

Judging by the recent animation failures from both TS4 and GST2 - I think it is the exact opposite. They chase and market the roster/licenses more then they give care to a proper game play. It is quite evident in the way it is being marketed.

That's not what i said though lol.....the subject of bigger rosters/licensing deals was brought up and i referred to that but never did i say the roster's size fail was due to more time being spent on animations! I said the excuse of "funding/individual licesing" is bs as it's more to due with the team not wanting to seperately scan,copy, motion cap and animate 60 different players. Animations fails have nothing to due with the fact that they still worked on each pro and if you really pay attention each pro's strokes are still individual to them, now whether or not they are ACCURATE is a entirely different subject!

But i stand by what i originally said, these developers don't want to have a 30-40 player roster that they have to individually scan, mo cap and animate on top of giving them multiple outfits and mannerisms...it's much easy to hide duplications in a roster of 20 players than it would be a game with 50-60 players. Plus quite frankly with Tennis not being overly popular on the video game market i'm sure they don't see the point of filling the roster with dozens of obscure players, so they figure they will cover their bases by getting the biggest household names and sprinkle in a few random "upcoming talents" and the tennis fans should be pleased.

[djarvik]

Fair enough.