Despite the fact that there are now officially more games on the Switch eShop than there are people living on the planet (citation needed), it’s fair to say tennis fans have severely limited options when it comes to games on the system.
Sure, Mario Tennis Aces is great and all, but those looking for a more serious representation of the sport are pretty much stuck with Tennis World Tour, which is about as entertaining as catching a Roger Federer smash full in the face. With the racquet, not the ball. The glory days of Virtua Tennis, Top Spin and even Wii Sports seem to be gone now, so what are tennis fans to do?
Step forward AO Tennis 2, an officially-licensed game based on the Australian Open, developed by Melbourne-based Big Ant Studios. It promises to fill that tennis ball shaped hole in Switch owners’ libraries and it juuuust about manages it, though it’s certainly got its fair share of rough edges – sometimes literally.
Naturally, given its title, AO Tennis 2 contains a full recreation of the Australian Open event, including polygonal recreations of Melbourne Park and its various courts: the Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne Arena, Margaret Court Arena and Show Court 2 and 3, as well as one of the smaller 500-seat courts (for matches featuring less well-known players). It’s all impressively accurate, right down to the fact that Andy Murray isn’t in it.
Most big names aren’t in here, to be fair, with only a handful of exceptions. There are 25 real-life players to choose from – 12 men and 13 women – and while it’s clear that a game with a relatively modest budget like this wasn’t going to feature the entire ATP and WTA top 10, some of the entries are still a little odd.
In terms of men, the big name who absolutely is present and accounted for is world number one Rafael Nadal. After him, the next highest-ranked players are Gael Monfis and David Goffin, who are currently ranked 10th and 11th respectively. That means no Federer, no Djokovic, no Medvedev and so on. The rest are a mixed bag, some of whom are probably unknown to even tennis die-hards.
South African player Kevin Anderson is in here, who’s currently sitting at the heady heights of 121st in the world, and while the UK is still represented despite the absence of Andy Murray; it’s by Kyle Edmund, who’s ranked 69th, which is nice and all but slightly underwhelming. More bewildering is the game’s Australian men’s representative: while we fully appreciate that a game set in Australia and made by an Australian developer is going to have to include one of its own countrymen to the roster, we’d have hoped they could have done better than Thanasi Kokkinakis, who’s currently ranked 199th. There are 11 Aussies ranked higher than him in real life at the moment.
The women’s roster fares a little better, in that both the 1st and 2nd ranked players (Ash Barty and Karolina Pliskova) are included: it probably helps that Barty’s Australian, too. Most of the others are from the top 20 (including the UK’s Johanna Konta) but there are still a few odd outsiders, like Monic Puig (ranked 77th) and another wildly left-field Australian pick, Daria Gavrilova: she’s currently 241st in the world, so her neighbours probably don’t even know who she is. Naturally, there are still some notable names missing here, so there’s no Naomi Osaka and no Serena Williams.
Thankfully, this can at least be remedied to some extent by the player creation feature, which lets you build your own stars using a needlessly complicated series of facial sliders. If you’re comfortable tweaking your player’s masseter depth, orbicularis oris intensity, nasolabial furrow and malar fat pad – yes, really – then go for it; otherwise, you may want to head to the game’s Academy section where a bunch of lovely other gamers have already done the hard work for you.
The Academy contains user-made creations, which crucially also includes all those uploaded for the previous AO Tennis game on PS4 and Xbox One. That means you already have around 20,000 created players to choose from, many of whom look pretty realistic; you can get decent likenesses of Murray, Federer, Williams and everyone else who’s missing this way, and it’s all relatively pain-free.
It isn’t just players you can find at the Academy, either. There’s also a logo creator, where you can upload your own designs to be added to created players’ uniforms, as well as a ridiculously-detailed venue creator where you can make not just a custom court, but an entire custom compound consisting of numerous courts, buildings and other decorations. As before, there are plenty of existing user-created offerings here, giving you a delightfully devilish legal minefield that will let you make your game look far more officially-licensed than it actually is. Goodbye ‘London Main Court’, hello Wimbledon Centre Court.
This huge creation suite is one of the first signs that AO Tennis 2 is potentially punching above its weight. Another even bigger example is the brilliant Career mode, which will last you an absolute age. After creating your player and starting off at the bottom of the rankings – there’s an enormous pile of generic players here, so your initial ranking is well into the thousands – you have to play your way through a number of smaller events and build up your stats to try and become the champ.
This isn’t just a simple case of mindlessly entering tournament after tournament. The Career mode clearly takes some inspiration from the NBA 2K games by sprinkling plenty of personality into proceedings. There are a bunch of story-based cutscenes that change depending on how well (or badly) you’re playing, and frequent press conferences that have an impact on how both the press and fans feel about you; following a number of temper tantrums we lost a tournament, only to be given a newspaper headline saying the tennis-watching public were delighted we were leaving early.
This is all really impressive stuff, then; a half-decent helping of licensed players, the ability to fill in the gaps with a huge library of user-created characters, a lengthy and detailed career mode and even a fully-fledged venue creation tool. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at the future of tennis games here until you actually step out onto the court and realise that maybe it’s pushing itself a little too far.
To be blunt, it looks awful. Everything’s fine from a distance but the close-ups are constantly jarring to look at; sometimes your player’s skin looks so rough you’d believe it if they told you they’d dunked their arm in a vat of boiling water before leaving the locker room. Other times there are weird strobe effects that appear to be some sort of lighting bug. Meanwhile, the crowd is laughably low-res; again, this isn’t a problem during actual rallies but given that your player is often seen sitting on a seat in front of the fans, you regularly get a chance to see their terrifyingly serrated saw-like arms up close.
It’s also extremely frustrating to play, at least at first. There’s a learning curve here where you have to hold a button to hit each shot, and the length of time you hold the button determines how accurate the shot is; hold it down too long (or not long enough) and you won’t be able to position it properly. This isn’t a bad idea in theory, but every shot seems to have wildly different timing depending on the context of where your player’s positioned, and it isn’t always clear what type of stroke animation the game’s going to play. Sometimes, if you try to charge up your shot early enough – when running to the back of the court to catch a lob, for example – it decides you aren’t going to swing for it at all.
The shot timing is made even harder by the abysmal performance. The frame rate’s about as stable as McEnroe in his prime, and you regularly see stutters, freezes and jumps during actual rallies, which is massively off-putting. Switch to handheld mode and everything gets worse; player models get blurrier, background textures become jaggier and the frame rate becomes even less reliable – at times you can literally see the ball stutter frame-by-frame across the court.
Doubles matches become particularly sluggish; the whole game feels like it slows down, which is confirmed after each rally where the game switches to a cut-scene. When it ends a big ‘AO’ logo swoops across the screen: this is supposed to be a slick “swoosh” effect, but instead, it happens so slowly that you start to have deep reflections about your existence on the planet and realise that you only have one life and it’s being wasted watching this slow-mo logo swing by with all the velocity of a time-lapse photo.
Conclusion
There’s a genuinely brilliant game hidden away somewhere in AO Tennis 2, but you need to have the patience of a saint to put up with its horrendous frame rate issues and the impact they have on its already tricky stroke timing system. The Career mode is a joy and the level of customisation and user creations is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in a tennis game, so tennis fans may still want to give it a look, as long as they can cope with its infuriatingly erratic performance. It may not be a popular thing to say on a Nintendo site, but if you have access to another system, you may want to look into how it runs on that instead.
Comments 44
This is unexceptable! A game with these kinda graphics should run as smooth as butter on Switch.
Was it last year that Big Ben released a broken unfinished tennis game and said they weren't going to patch it, instead their focus is on making a better game next time? Basically telling those who bought the game, tough luck but our next game will be better thanks to your money. Is this that game?
Edit, Yep, this is the game.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/06/tennis_world_tour_has_disastrous_launch_will_rely_on_updated_version_next_year
BigBen Interactive have to be one the worst publishers around.They pump out so many low quality ports and just don't seem to give a toss.
Where is sega and virtua tennis when you need them.
God bless the internet, so that we can avoid crap like this.
Is there any way to get a gif of a performance problem in future reviews? I do find it helpful to see a little bit of what the reviewer went through
I have to say I bought it. And I’ve noticed a few stutters here and there but other than that found it really enjoyable as a proper tennis sim.
The shots are easy to master - if you aim left or right you add further direction with the left and right triggers which I think is quite neat and makes for some satisfying shots.
Not perfect by any stretch but worth a 7 in my opinion.
I kept seeing this on Steam and thought it meant "Adults Only", lol
How well is the smoke rendered?
@OorWullie Big Ben is the publisher of both games, but they have different developers. World Tour was developed by Breakpoint, and AO Tennis was developed by Big Ant who also developed Cricket 19. From the sound of it, AO Tennis is a much more solid game while you should never consider World Tour. Big Ant provided strong support for the first AO Tennis on other consoles, hopefully they will be able to improve the performance if AO Tennis 2 on switch with future patches
@jarvismp That is the kind of score I was expecting based on the other impressions I have read. I will probably still pick this up when it makes it stateside
Reads like a 3...
Oh woah! Watch out Mario Tennis Aces, no other tennis game can get this visually beautiful on the Switch!
On a serious note, bloody Hell this game looks like it's on the PS2; for it to have performance issues is unacceptable. Graphics don't make a game, and the gameplay seems to be fine, but just... really?
I don't care for the graphics, the career mode is what I've been waiting for half my life. I played top spin 2 to death.
But the five hours I've played this have been so frustrating. Every time I'm at the cusp of winning a rally, the game stutters or freezes and I lose.
I really want to love this game, but I just can't.
A shame but sort of expected. I really wanted this to be good but performance issues are pretty much a deal-breaker for me. :/
Is a patch on the way or not ?
This review is a load of rubbish. I've got the game and haven't had any issues with the performance and it doesn't look nearly as bad as you're making out. BigAnt developed the game (not BigBen) and they are a smallish developer who are limited in who they can license but they've provided a great way to download any other players or stadiums you want. They also spent a lot of time improving the previous game so it's fair to say they'll do the same with this. It's more about how the game plays and it's a pretty good simulation.
@tatanga
There was a day one patch and i'm sure there will be others
@Bucky yeah Bigben is just the publisher but somehow everything they publish is a port which runs like rubbish. There has to be a common denominator here. It's thanks to Bigben that people love Panic Button and Saber Interactive so much.
Wow, now that's a bad port! Luckily the original version of this game managed to become decent eventually, but it apparently look a lot of patches to get there. I enjoy it more than Mario Tennis Aces at least.
@CurryPowderKeg79 Virtua Tennis 4 for the PS Vita looks and runs better than this.
But Virtua tennis was too arcade for me. I love top spin 4, want to play AOT2, just need a patch a priori.
@JayJ
I have both games and I agree that Virtua Tennis does look a bit better but AOT2 also plays a more realistic game of tennis with more control. I play tennis regularly and enjoy the AOT2 simulation more and feel it's more accurate a representation
@Magonigal I get that, which is why I am going to stick with the original until this gets patched up and discounted.
I have the game and yes it could be better but I'm really enjoying it. I'm sure it will be updated and the game will be even better in time.
I would give it a seven, as with Cricket 19 a great title if you are into your sports games.
@xxMPJxx
Yeah I agree. BigAnt games are a bit scappy but Cricket 19 gets updated quite often so hopefully they'll do the same with AOT2. I think they're pretty good at simulating sports and have a lot of depth
Virtua Tennis Sega please!
After seeing some of the outstanding ports of "impossible" games on Switch that we've had, a poor performing port like this has no excuses. Either the team behind it isn't up to par, or was lazy.
Can I do better? Nope. Are there a lot of people who can? Yup.
Big Ant Studios...hmmm, no thanks.
I’ll stick with Tennis World Tour and Mario Aces.
Performance issues on the Nintendo switch?? Shocker!
As a fan of the original on Xbox, I picked this up on both PC and Switch. The switch port is definitely rougher in terms of frame rate and resolution but perfectly playable... HOWEVER, í do think there is a possible memory leak issue that may be exacerbated by specific courts (the court complexity varies a lot between different locations, particularly when user made courts are loaded up). I've played whole matches and mini tournaments with few if any stutters during game play handheld (cut scenes always stutter a little)... then the next tournament (with a different court) starts to stutter and gets worse as the match continues... at one point trying to save caused it to crash to the dashboard... reloading up the game and trying to delete the save caused the same problem, repeatedly. Finally, I rebooted the switch and the game loaded fine and was absolutely stutter free again for a while. This is all with the day one patch installed.
RE the player roster and lack of licensed players, its my understanding that licensing IP (players, venues etc) for video games in sports like tennis has become something of a minefield - every court, tournament, player etc has to be dealt with separately (c.f. something like fifa, where the costs are extreme but EA is primarily dealing with one major body that covers huge chunks of the football licencing business).. even if individual licence costs for low ranking players / courts is low, the legal costs of dealing with SO many different entities mounts up. Throw in the fact that even the world's best tennis game is unlikely to sell the same number of copies as a Fifa or Madden in the main markets, and companies have to cherry pick a few big names and venues / tournaments. I think AO's comprehensive creator system to pad out the roster is a good one.
Picked this up wanting to have a sports game to my collection. My god it is not even close to being worth the price. Constant frame rate issues throughout matches is the biggest gripe. It is a difficult game yes, but that shouldn't drop the rating. That being said you can play it on amateur! And the AI legit make no mistakes and run rings around you still lol
@OorWullie : I was somewhat tempted to grab the Gallos-Rolland edition of Tennis World Tour if the DLC content was on the cartridge, but then I took a look at the cover.
The cover art was comprised of an extremely low quality JPEG had that been blown up (and this was the actual packaging, not an in-store dummy case). BigBen do not give the slightest crap about the quality of their games or how they present them. Utterly, inexcusably pathetic, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. What's worse is that people are buying their garbage. Far too many developers and publishers have gone under for much, much less than this!
I've heard mostly bad things about BigBen over the years, but now I will know to avoid them at all costs.
Tennis World Tour is actually a very good Tennis game.
When it first launched, there's a lot of bugs and features missing, but it was all patched up. The game runs at 60 fps, has Nadal and Roger Federer, more players and real stadiums built in, not to mention better looking graphics. The best part is the gameplay, which surprises me. I always like Sega Virtua Tennis, however after playing Tennis World Tour I can't go back to the arcady Tennis anymore. TWT is the most realistic Tennis game on the market that simulate the game really well.
oh lord, i am so happy, that i've cancelled my physical preorder! i have preordered it- but the physical release got delayed ON THE RELEASE DATE!!!!! (screw you big ben) until the end of january, so i have decided to cancel it - and holy cow - i am glad i did it hahaha
@eRaz0r the launch has been botched by Bigben (not the first time they've done this)... I was watching the game's UK release date before Xmas and not only did it look like a months gap between digital and physical (eshop vs Amazon), every other website / shop / region seemed different, ranging from 9 jan to end of february! I reached out to BigBen for clarification a couple of times and got zero response.
@Silly_G When Tennis World Tour launched badly a couple of years ago, a BigBen director gave an interview to a french games trade magazine. He said they knew it was nowhere near ready to launch and that lots of people were demanding refunds from eshops for false advertising (the whole online was delayed and removed days before release) but reassured them that the game would still be profitable because the physical discs were not sale or return! That summed up the company for me...
@nicols : Sounds about right. Inexplicably, EB Games takes returns, but nobody else does, and they shouldn't unless there is a defect or if the product was falsely advertised.
Oh, man, the 3D models in the second screenshot.
I've seen better 3D models in DS games. Seriously, the original DS!
@Silly_G Yep, they are a piss poor company with no concern for quality. I've always associated the name Big Ben Interactive with low quality and whenever I see their name attached to a game, I instantly dismiss it. Those comments made by one of their top men after the release of Tennis World Tour though really annoyed me, to the point they're the publisher I dislike the most, despite having never played one of their games and I never will. I'm not one to bear a grudge but with Big Ben, I'll make an exception.
Second patch now out and brings game to v1.3.0. Most notable changes are the blurry string textures on the nets etc have been fixed, less stutter in cut scenes. Actual game play stutters in handheld mode may also have been slightly improved?? (although as per my previous comment, I found this to be very variable between courts etc so might just be the courts I tried). The really annoying end of match infinite appluause sound loop is still there - makes watching match highlights unbearable to me as its like a drill going through my head and 30 seconds.
How much? The price put me right off straight away. Just let SEGA give us a Virtua Tennis game and I'll be happy enough
"It may not be a popular thing to say on a Nintendo site, but if you have access to another system, you may want to look into how it runs on that instead."
Funny.
Ok, but this doesn't answer my main question:
How exactly do you play tennis in this? Is this game one where you would use both Joycons or a Pro Controller, using button inputs and using the control stick to move, or this is closer to Wii Sports(which I'm hoping for), where you use a Joycon to swing the racket?
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