So the game came out yesterday in the US and the first reviews are hitting the web.


IGN: 8.5 The full review is to pages long so give it a read if you are interested in it, here is the closing comment:

Closing Comments
Grand Slam Tennis is an impressive package on Wii, and one of the best tennis games I’ve ever played. This opening year of Wii MotionPlus support – and the fact that it’s the first time out the gate for this series – leaves a few odd experiences to be had, and it’s not quite a true 1:1 experience for real-racquet movement, but minus a bit of a learning curve and some mechanical serving the experience is surprisingly fun and really, really addictive. It may seem daunting at first to deal with character movement, swing control, and button modifiers for lobs and drops, but once you get in the zone you’ll feel a level of connectivity that other games on the system just don’t have, and it’s paled only in comparison with Tiger Woods which is simply amazing this year. On top of some impressive, extremely accurate – once you get the feel for them – motion controls the game is also packed with content, including a full Grand Slam career mode, create-a-character, impressive online play that puts country vs. country play at the forefront of it all, and a party mode I actually want to play. I’m hoping EA goes even further with MotionPlus next year, including stronger motion serving and true hand-tracking, but as a debut franchise and rookie MotionPlus effort EA is already raising the bar for sports games on Wii.

Eurogamer awarded GST a 5/10 mentioning numerous control issues, but Eurogamer tends to suck when it comes to motion controls. Add some actual learning curve to it as it seems to be the case here and they're bound to be unable to play it at all. I'm inclined to think it's much better than that since IGN's dude manages to get comfortable enough with it, even though there still are a few issues. After all, it's more likely the dude who can't get it to do what he wants is doing something wrong if someone else manages to get it...

Anyway, Wii Sports Resort will be the title to get for me when it comes to the first Motion Plus showcase as it seems to be the best use of it yet, as you'd expect coming from Nintendo themselves. By that time we'll be certain which Tennis game is best as well, between this and Virtua Tennis.

Nintendo Power rated it with a 7.5/10.

I thought it was interesting that the online mode pitted countries aganist eachother in a national leaderboard. More games should do this, though i suppose Japan would lead most of those. 

This game looks like a ton of fun.  I would love to play it if I had a Wii.  Some people don't like the art style but personally I love it.  Really colorful too.

Just picked this game up with the Wii Motion Plus.  Having just played a couple of hours with it, my initial impression is that its..awkward and not what I expected based on the overall positive initial impressions leading up to its release.  The way I'm holding the wii remote does not at all match up with how my player positions himself on screen.  As I hold the wii remote stationary in front of me (I'm a righty), the on screen character tends to switch from moving his arm to the left for a moment, and then back to the right.  I thought maybe its my stance, so I tried facing the tv directly, facing to the side and still can't find the right stance.  I thought maybe I'm moving my hands around too much so I stayed completely still and my character still keeps switching stances awkwardly.  Even re-calibrated as the game suggested and still doesn't seem right.

As for the actual gameplay and hitting the ball, its a hit or miss so far.  I'm having to swing a little earlier than would seem natural.  When smoothly swinging the wii remote the game does a fairly good job of determining a flat/top spin/slice shot.  There are times, however, where I'm bringing my arm to my other side to setup for a shot and the game interprets it as a swing resulting in a missed shot.  Again, I've just had a couple of hours with this and maybe my expectations were way too high.  I'll continue to try and adjust but so far I'm thinking I should have picked up Tiger instead.

I will be getting Tiger 10 on Friday, but this may tempt me to get two games. I think I will read a few reviews now before I stick with that idea.

I wonder how much of the control issues that some people seem to be having are due to the fact that Ubisoft decided to also make this game work without the M+ add on.

I have read about a very interesting thing on the GBAtemp forums, one that might explain the huge difference in review opinions about the quality of the MotionPlus controls.



Appearantly, the controls work like crap when you hold the controller like you're used to from the Wiimote, and like your intuition tells you: With the IR sensor side to the Wii. Appearantly, swings that are initiated from a basic position of "Wiimote straight in hand" just don't work. The game tells you to hold the Wiimote sideways, "A" button facing up, long side of the Wiimote facing the TV (which side depends on fore/backhand), as basic position, and initiate swings from there.  The GBAtempers say that then, and only then, do the MotionPlus controls work, and work well.

I can very well imagine that this is the exact thing that is responsible for the Eurogamer review. They were not holding the Wiimote like the game told them to.

Edit: RnRpax' post seems to prove that point. The game expects you to hold the racket to your side, not to your front, and if you go from Front to Side and then to Swing all in a second after the ball passed over the net, the controls don't work right.

I am actually going to play the game right after I finished this post, but not with MotionPlus. That's not available here until Friday. I will get a good view of the controls and then compare to MotionPlus when I have it.
Same with Virtua Tennis and Tiger Woods.

I just got my ass handed to me from the AI, Wiimote+Nunchuck controls. : )

The non-M+ controls work very well, if you ask me. The angle of the shot is controlled by timing, just like in Wii sports, but less forgiving. On top of that, different gestures and the A/B buttons are used to influence the type of shot. And you can control your player manually.

I didn't have much of a problem getting my shots how and where I wanted them to go; the controls are like Wii Sports Tennis, only there's more to do, it's less forgiving and more challenging. I can definatly see it being more difficult with MotionPlus, just because you're totally not used to it.
And what is now true for me playing without MotionPlus, I guess, is even more true with MotionPlus: If you suck at Tennis (games), you WILL start out losing matches. It's definatly a big difference to Wii Sports or Mario Power Tennis, that feel very guided after GST.

Having seen the motions the game suggests for MotionPlus, I can definatly see how holding the Wiimote like you're used to (in front of you, directed at the TV) and then hitting the ball like you were playing Table Tennis WON'T work. You seem to really have to stand sideways, moving your arm back and then hitting the ball when the Wiimote is parallel to the TV.

I'm having quite some trouble wrapping my mind about how to hold it now... nice to hear that those who are having bad experiences with this game are most likely to blame themselves and not the game. I wonder how the Giant Bomb review (if there will be any) will fare for this game knowing that if you do not take the time to look how you should hold the controller the game will not work properly ...

Quite unrelated but thanks to this thread i've actually learned how to aim in Wii Sports, I never knew that it was timing based, played it quite a bit also.

Hopefully my local store will have this in a demo booth to try on Friday. It certainly looks like I need some hands on time with it first.

Online looks good, McEnroe seems a bit strong at the net.

After having played some more and read Meowayne's posts, I've grown a little more used to it.  I haven't tried standing sideways as suggested, however, swinging with the broadside of the wii remote / face buttons up does seem to work better.  The game indicates that the face of the raquet would be along this broad side and as I kept that in mind along with proper timing, the shots I wanted started coming through.  The no-swings and swing-when-i-didn't-want-to's still come up more often than I'd like.  With that aside, I did surprisingly enjoy playing other people online when the player ratings were evenly matched.  My created character is too weak to match up against people who pick the pros.

I'll give the sideways stance a try next time, although I'm wondering if that will make it more difficult to switch stances if I wanted to hit a backhand/forehand shot.  Even now, I think I was expecting too much from this game + wmp.  Here's to hoping future games implementing wmp have better results.

I just ran around in my living room, playing Tennis over the Internet against someone who did the same.

It was epic.

Lol :) why did you RUN :P

I want them to make a new Mario Tennis game for Wii already.

Sooo, this or Virtua Tennis?

I may cave and get this on Friday. 

Just to point out in this thread also, Eurogamer pulled down the 5/10 review after finding out their Motion Plus device was faulty. They have now put up this revised review giving the game 8/10.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/grand-slam-tennis-review?page=2         8/10

EA have been spamming the Wimbledon advertising slots severely, at every BBC 1 interval I expect to hear John McEnroe's voice now.

have now put up this revised review giving the game 8/10

Gametrailers review 8.5, don't agree with them hitting on the graphics, why does every sports game have to have realistic graphics? 

It's not that they're not realistic, it's that they're so simplistic and bland... Like their clothes are just flat colors, there's barely any texturing... I think they're pretty bad too, cartoony or not. The lighting's bland too, why not add some nice cel shading a la Wind Waker to spice it up?

Glad the game's good though.

i like the way it looks, i rather have simple and stylized  than trying to push realism and look bad like Virtua tennis