REVIEW : Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition (Xbox Series X)
The game of tennis is going through a crisis rather complicated. While a few years ago there was a fierce fight for the throne between sagas like Top Spin and Virtua Tennis, despite embodying quite different concepts -Top Spin was an ode to tennis simulation while the Sega game bet on a more arcade-style direct – the quality of both was evident. You might like one more or less, but you recognized the quality of the adversary; a simile of what happens with Federer and Nadal.
After several years without even racket games, the Tennis World Tour saga was born, whose first instalment fell slightly halfway between the two series mentioned but had in its favour having the license of several of the best tennis players in the world, in male and female category. In September 2020, Tennis World Tour 2 came out on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC with the same premise and trying to learn from mistakes, but the ball went off the court again. Now, the game from Big Ant Studios and Nacon debuts on the new generation of consoles with the odd improvement, but insufficient to deserve to enter the ATP ranking.
We go in parts. Because the discomfort in Tennis World Tour 2 is experienced from the moment you start the game for the first time and start its tutorial. So far, good. But if the logical thing is that they teach you how to play or some fundamentals to take the racket better than Joaquín del Betís, the first thing they tell us is one of their novelties based on a card system, so we have another sports game that adds to fashion, this time unnecessarily.
Before each game, we can assign these cards to our tennis players, and we can play them at any time during the match. And they will serve us to obtain punctual bonuses, with which to reduce the wear of the resistance, improve the precision or even affect the effectiveness of the opponent. They are improvements, also, that being of such tiny percentages, their impact on the party is hardly appreciated, so they are true nonsense. Also, they add an arcade component to a game that wants to be a simulation, which denotes an aberrant lack of personality, which is reflected in the final result.
When it comes to raising the racket in the air, which is what matters, it takes a lot to feel comfortable playing. From what we say, the game does not have a clear identity of what it wants and, to make matters worse, some details show that it could have used a few more months of development.
Regardless of the tennis player we choose, it seems that they carry a bag of stones in their pockets since the movements are fluid and unnatural. The character goes semi-automatically to where the ball is in an almost subtle way, but that takes away options for whoever is in control. Many points that we lose are exasperating and precisely because of this unintuitive functionality. The counterfeit shots of the rivals are practically indefensible, even if we sense them and move the player; but those thousandths that the game loses until the character reacts make it impossible to respond. And we will yell at the screen as John McEnroe did to the umpires.
Tennis World Tour 2 has good ideas, but it’s a shame they get clouded by everything else. The system to return the balls is interesting, having to hold down the button that we want to use to give an effective racket. It’s hard to measure the times in the beginning, but after a few games it comes out naturally. The setting is also well achieved, with details such as the ball boys gesturing when a ball goes out, the active chair umpire or even the possibility of asking for the hawk’s eye if we think that a ball that has entered has been called worse. As we put hours into it, the experience becomes more bearable, but it is still unnatural and unproductive to do something that works so poorly.
Some of the best tennis players have their animations when serving or when they are to the rest. The infinite tics of Rafa Nadal when serving, the elegance of Roger Federer when returning the ball or the versatility of Garbiñe Muguruza. Having the license of many professional tennis players, both male and female, plays in his favour. But, again, it falters in a technical section that, far from it, is of a new generation.
If you overcome all the problems it has, Tennis World Tour 2 has a Career Mode that allows you to create your tennis player, although the customization options are minimal. It does not bring anything new; You know. Create a player who starts out being a complete one-armed and wins games to improve his statistics to be able to compete against the best and sneak into the rankings. On the way, you have to manage fatigue by deciding which tournaments we participate in and which we do not. Here we can also take advantage of the aforementioned cards. And unlocking new clothes and rackets along the way to make everything more personal. There is also an Online mode to test ourselves with other players, and here we can find fun experiences thanks to unpredictable matches that move away from the predictable mechanics of the AI.
