AO Tennis 2

The last tennis game I played was the rather disappointing Tennis World Tour that I reviewed here on Digitalchumps. To say it was a let-down is a bit of an understatement and as much as I tried I just couldn’t quite bring myself to love it. That being said, it didn’t dampen my desire to find a modern tennis game that could faithfully recreate the glorious game of tennis yet not be obtuse enough to make it boring. Enter Big Ant Studios and whilst their first foray into the sport, AO Tennis, was apparently a bit of a let-down we all know that in tennis, you get a second serve.

Sports games, for me, mostly rely on how well they represent the game itself in digital form. With exception of full on simulation games, they must walk the fine line between being fun for casual players yet have enough nuance to make it a challenge for those who wish to realise their sporting fantasies. If it’s too complicated, dull or just an absolute pain to play — as things were in Tennis World Tour — then it just simply isn’t fun. So it gives me great pleasure to report that AO Tennis 2 is an absolute joy to play. It’s not perfect, but from the very first match I was enjoying myself immensely.

It seemed rather appropriate that I should choose to jump into a quick match as Canberra’s own Nick Kyrgios. Shot types are mapped to the X, A, Y and B buttons making your virtual player hit slices, flat, lob and top-spin shots respectively. There are modifiers on the triggers for more aggressive or inside-out shots and should you wish to, you can challenge calls by pulling both triggers — sounds rather apt really. Holding each button will determine power but, hold it too long or let go too early and your accuracy, noted by a green/yellow/red circle above your player, will go out of the window. This doesn’t guarantee your shot will be out but it does mean that line volley might be less amazing than you hoped.

Things took a little while to get used to, especially having to keep an eye on accuracy all the while moving a white dot around to position my shot. However, with help from some useful force-feedback, timing shots became easier and easier. After a while, as a star-player at least, I was hit cross-court shots with relative ease and working my opponent over. The ebb-and-flow you’d expect was there and whilst there was an occasional missed shot it felt good. It’s a good sign in my book if I can pickup my controller, jump straight into a game and get a hang of things without the game taking me to task and beating me down. I don’t have to win my first match but to be able to play and play confidently before hitting up tutorials ticks the “ease-of-use” box quite nicely.

Once I got the hang of things I took myself over to the short but snappy tutorials to get a further grasp on serves and game-craft. From here I could either take on a career or play the Australian Open, the only officially licensed tournament available. Other internationally known locations are included but exist as London or Paris. Thankfully, another feather in AO Tennis’ cap is the plethora of community created content carried over from AO Tennis. Want to play as Andy Murray, no problem, feel like putting Andre Agassi up against the likes of Nadal, sure thing. You can also get a hold of other, properly named locations or if you really want to, you can go and create your own local tennis club and let the world play there. It’s a staple among Big Ants’ games and the tools at your disposal are vast.

For me though, I had to start my career and just for fun I accepted all the defaults aside from my players look which I randomised until I found one that fitted the name John Smith the best. As you can see from the picture above his haircut is a thing of beauty, if I don’t get a shampoo commercial at some point in my virtual career I’m going to have words with my agent. As it’s rather vogue at the moment, career mode here takes the journey style made popular in FIFA and seems inescapable now anywhere else. To be fair, it adds a bit of drama and flair to what is essentially play matches, level your pro up, rinse and repeat. Here, you pick things on a week by week basis either choosing to play in an appropriate tournament, rest or train. Winnings are re-invested into your skill points and so the more you win the better you become.

If you don’t feel like playing as a boot-scraping newbie then you can take on a star player and see how many Grand Slams you can win. It must be noted that if you do use downloaded player lists, this must be selected on creation as anything downloaded after won’t make it into your career. However, should a career not be enough for you then alongside the previously mentioned Australian Open mode, whereby you take on the tournament this game is named after, you have scenarios or online play. The scenarios are pretty self-explanatory and there are a number of user created ones as well that you can download in the confusingly named Academy menu option.

So far so good then, until you decide to go online. Now I’m the first to admit that Australia, as a nation, isn’t exactly leading the way when it comes to Internet technology. I could bore most of you to tears with my gripes with the National Broadband Network but suffice it to say we’re not blessed with the super-fast internet you’d prefer in this day and age. That said, I can and do play multiplayer games online with little to no issue. I even join US servers and whilst my ping goes up it’s all still playable because most games have decent net code that can, to some extent, ease your geographic pain. AO Tennis on the other hand, seemingly bolted multiplayer on at the last minute, sucked in a deep breath and presumably said “yep, that’ll do” whilst exhaling.

After attempting several matches, with delays running into the hundred of milliseconds my experience of online play in AO Tennis 2 is that of exasperation. With the serve it was mostly aces and on return it was much the same for my opponent mostly down to the fact that, at a random point during the serve the ball would change trajectory. It’s hard to explain but on the serves I managed to return guessing where the next shot would go was almost impossible. My opponent would shape up to return the ball where it came from, it’d cross the net heading in that direction and a split second later would then move half-way across the court and turned into a shot down the middle. My hunch is that the game on my end is taking a guess at where my opponent hit it, receives the update from my opponents instance and makes the change instantly. It was absolutely maddening.

AO Tennis 2 is, almost by default, the best representation of Tennis this console generation. That doesn’t mean Big Ant Studios rested on their laurels as they took the criticism laid at their feet post-AO Tennis and ran with it. There’s still some issues with game-play, mostly limited to occasional animation issues and missed shots but overall it’s solid and that counts for a lot. Player likenesses for licensed players such as Kyrgios, Nadal and Barty are okay but you can tell we’re working to a budget. However, when all is said and done AO Tennis 2 is a entertaining and fun escape and takes on the baton which as been carried by Top Spin 4 since 2011.