Grand Slam Tennis 2

 PlayStation 3
Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 36 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 36
  3. Negative: 0 out of 36
Buy Now
Buy on
  1. Worth Playing
    Nov 12, 2012
    90
    Grand Slam Tennis 2 is worth picking up, and the fact that the online portion of the game is still active certainly makes for an appeasing purchase.
  2. GameFocus
    Mar 4, 2012
    90
    A plethora of content, an expansive career covering the 4 Grand Slams, a great roster of players, and an incredibly precise new control scheme makes this game certainly deserving of Grand Slam in its title.
  3. Eurogamer Sweden
    Feb 16, 2012
    90
    We have a new king on the tennis-game throne. With fantastic gameplay, beautiful graphics and virtually never-ending entertainment value, Grand Slam Tennis 2 lives up to it's name and proves once and for all that EA Sports can dominate any sport they want. This is a game worthy of Björn Borg himself!
  5. IGN
    Feb 10, 2012
    85
    There's room for improvement – chiefly in the variety of game modes, the selection of commentary snippets and the pace of the career mode - but for now, Grand Slam Tennis 2 is the best game of tennis that video games have to offer.
  6. GamingTrend
    Mar 2, 2012
    81
    So does Grand Slam Tennis 2 give you a reason to dust off your Move controller and give your right arm a workout? The answer is yes. I didn't have high hopes for Grand Slam Tennis 2's move implementation, mostly because I haven't been impressed by the Move at all prior to this game. But I can honestly say that this game is way more fun with the Move controller than with the regular analog stick controls.
  7. Playstation Official Magazine UK
    Feb 28, 2012
    80
    The best tennis game on PS3. [March 2012, p.101]
    All this publication's reviews
  8. NZGamer
    Feb 15, 2012
    80
    What really sold us on the game was the audio. If it wasn't the John McEnroe ear bashing in practice, or the wonderfully choreographed commentary in each match, it was that little bit extra where you have the option to choose your own serving exultation. All are perfectly done and top off what feels like a realistic play experience.
  9. GamingXP
    Feb 9, 2012
    80
    The Total Racquet Control is a good idea, but doesn't help if you can't spot the ball on the lawn. Overall, graphics are okay, though not the best you've ever seen from EA Sports. Good atmosphere and worth a look for tennis fans.
  10. Game Informer
    Feb 8, 2012
    80
    While it's not a perfect product, EA knows how to make deep, full-featured sports games with high production values. In Grand Slam Tennis 2, developer EA Canada applies some of the lessons learned from the company's other franchises to create a game that excels in many areas while coming up short in a few important ones.
  11. PSM3 Magazine UK
    Mar 22, 2012
    79
    This is a strong Pong. [Apr 2012, p.101]
    All this publication's reviews
  12. Game Chronicles
    Feb 27, 2012
    78
    While there is plenty of room for improvement this is still one of the few tennis games out there than you can justify spending $60, especially if you love tennis, either in real life, video games, or both. So grab your rackets, lace up your shoes, and get ready to swing your way to number one in the world.
  13. Game Over Online
    Feb 23, 2012
    78
    While Grand Slam Tennis 2 is not a Game of the Year candidate, it's certainly a very good game of virtual tennis, and a great value – especially at $49.99 - $10 cheaper than your average retail sports game. It's not without its frustrations, and it's not a technical masterpiece, but the online modes, smooth career offering, and ESPN classic matches will give you plenty to do. For a fan of tennis games, if you're looking to scratch the itch of swinging the old racket, I can certainly recommend this one to you.
  14. Digital Chumps
    Feb 14, 2012
    78
    A textbook, solid tennis sim from EA Sports that is accessible yet about as deep as you want it to be.
  15. Gamers' Temple
    Mar 29, 2012
    76
    All things considered, if you enjoy the sport or even if you just enjoy challenging yourself with new games that are Move compatible, I'd say this one is worth picking up.
  16. 3DJuegos
    Feb 10, 2012
    76
    Accessible controls and good visuals. GST2 is a game with good atmosphere and worth a look for tennis fans.
  17. Play UK
    Mar 4, 2012
    75
    Virtua Tennis is more accessible and the better multiplayer game. [Issue#215, p.83]
    All this publication's reviews
  18. XGN
    Feb 10, 2012
    75
    Grand Slam Tennis 2 is a pretty decent tennis game. The controls aren't that well-executed, but despite of that the game offers good old simple fun.
  19. Meristation
    Feb 10, 2012
    75
    This product comes at a good time, now that there aren't other games of this sport. Grand Slam Tennis 2 is an invitation to classic tennis players, in the four Grand Slam venues and brings the player into a very fun and intuitive control system.

Awards & Rankings

88
#88 Best PS3 Game of 2012

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
5.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 20 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 20
  3. Negative: 9 out of 20
  1. Madmaz
    Feb 14, 2012
    3
    Dont buy this game..Get Top Spin 4 or Virtual Tennis 4..on the surface of it it looks like a good game..lots of real players , all 4 grandDont buy this game..Get Top Spin 4 or Virtual Tennis 4..on the surface of it it looks like a good game..lots of real players , all 4 grand slam events, the ability to create your own player complete with game face. But the heart of the game the Career is awful. Compared to Top Spin 4 its severely lacking , not half as many smaller tournaments of competitions to enter and Top Spin 4' s player progression is much more advanced than this. Ok you might say thats ok I can live with that, and I agree but the one thing which absolutely kilss this game is they way they have done the Ai difficulty in the career. Instead of you choosing what lever you'd like to play on ie easy, normal, hard, they have done so you start your career on the easy level for 2/3 seasons then it goes up to normal then after a few more seasons it goes up again, so you end up on legendary difficulty in the final part of your career which means that in the first year you can WIN ALL THE GRAND SLAMS COZ THE AI IS ON EASY!!...hello??..where is the logic in that!?..so you dont really bother after that!..the game play itself is ok , but its on rails ..impossible to put the ball out....Poor effort by EA..the demo sold me this game, but the final product is rubbish..avoid at all costs. Get Top Spin 4 for a tennis game that will keep you coming back.… Full Review »
  2. Brak
    Sep 5, 2012
    3
    This game has some really entertaining game play/mechanics, looking at it strictly from the standpoint of what you do when you're in a match.This game has some really entertaining game play/mechanics, looking at it strictly from the standpoint of what you do when you're in a match. The controls strike a good balance between simplicity and sophistication.* The commentary is entertaining, if a little repetitive over time. It can be fun to play.

    And that's where my positives end, because for whatever time EA Sports spent in game mechanics, they seemingly spent no time whatsoever in the orchestration of the user experience across the different modes and usage patterns. Here are some examples of how the user experience off the court completely falls down.

    The navigation through screens, modes, transitions, etc., is quite simply the worst and most unintuitive I've used in a game in as long as I can remember. Navigation options are often incredibly difficult to decipher, based on their descriptions (i.e. "Okay, so what to I click on now?"), and most of the time, once you do figure them out, don't make any real sense at all from an intuitiveness standpoint. And the accompanying help screens? EA, you may as well have just written "TODO" on each page of documentation, for all of the lack of value of the sparse information presented. Simply awful, not production quality at all. Somebody-should-be-fired awful. It took quite a while of playing and navigating, with trial and error, to figure out what you should and shouldn't do.

    The career mode is unbelievably unrealistic and decidedly unrewarding. The first two years of your career are a total cakewalk. I lost one match in the entire 24 months of play. Then I stepped into the first match of the third year, and couldn't take more than a game from the lowest chump on the ladder. There's a complete disconnect and inconsistency in CPU player experience, from match to match.

    What's more, there's nothing particularly rewarding about winning. You collect these "yearly" and "career-long" goal accomplishments that translate into "points", but the points have absolutely no bearing on how well your follow-up skills and games are going to progress. They may occasionally coincide with an enhanced racket or some attribute points, but then again you're never clear in the beginning about whether you should even play the exhibition matches (which are the only ones to yield these improvements), since it's an either/or proposition to playing in the tournament going on at the same time (the either/or proposition is something you have to find out by trial and error). And at first glance it looks like you're on a yearly quest to achieve some laundry list of win objectives that conflict with other goals, only to figure out later that all of those objectives just carry over into the next year after year anyway, if you didn't complete them in the year specified. What?

    The worst part about this player feedback/improvement system, to me, is the fact that you don't develop better skills by virtue of playing (and winning). You can only up-level your skills by "training", or winning "special" (exhibition) matches. It's completely divorced from reality, which to me isn't a good quality in a reality simulator. What's also totally unrealistic, with respect to following real tennis as a fan, is that your "rank" improvements are entirely tied to this independent point-gathering system, which has nothing to do with the players you're playing (only the position in the tournament at which you face them). The end result is that, after two years and 8 Grand Slam wins in a row, I end up ranked 25th. What? And in the end, who cares? Because none of the players you play against have any meaningful ranking at all, let alone a ranking that measures against your own. What? The point system is entirely meaningless.

    This game has production-quality mechanics. The rest of it, from story to navigation to incentives, is quite simply an afterthought, and in no way resembles a production-quality experience. If you care about the progression of your games, as opposed to simply playing to play, this game is not going to be for you, by a wide margin.

    *Postscript: I found the Playstation Move controls to be unusable on this game. If you're looking for a great physically active PS Move game, this isn't the game for you.    … Full Review »
  3. ReallyNotNeeded
    Jul 29, 2017
    4
    I wouldn't recommend this tennis game.
    Grand Slam Tennis 2 was the first Playstation tennis game I played, and yes, to begin with, it was a    I wouldn't recommend this tennis game.
    Grand Slam Tennis 2 was the first Playstation tennis game I played, and yes, to begin with, it was a lot of fun. There is a variety of game modes, including Exhibition matches, tournaments, training, and finally career mode.
    The first three in that list, (Exhibition, tournaments and training) are great to start off with, but once you've done it a few times, it's boring and repetitive.
    However, career mode is diabolical. Your star can play for ten seasons, with each getting progressively harder. The first season is set to the easiest difficulty, which is Rookie. And even for beginner players, this is far too easy, and for the first 8 (ish) hours you win every match you play (and some would be against the likes of Roger Federer and Serena Williams) and the only way you would lose is if you did it on purpose.
    In the next season of your career, it does get better. The CPU is more advanced, but it still seems too easy to win Grand Slams and other tournaments, and if you are fairly good at this game, you'll find you'll have quite a tally after a few seasons.
    Eventually, it does get to be quite challenging, and can give a lot of entertainment. But by then, you've been playing for a long time, with few things to actually challenge you.
    On the more positive side, the players look very realistic, and the movement looks good (Although occasionally the players almost teleport to the ball to return it, but it can be funny.)
    There is also an option on the main menu and when you start a career to make your own tennis player. This is brilliant. There's so many ways to make your player different, and so many options to make him/her personal to you. You can even download tennis players made by other people.
    To conclude, I think you would be better off buying a different tennis game like Top Spin 4, as Grand Slam Tennis gets boring and repetitive so easily, and the career mode just isn't worth playing.
    Thanks for reading !    … Full Review »
See all user reviews »