


The inside out, which I will admit I have never used, is tied to the left trigger, while you can sprint around the court by holding the right trigger. A drop shot can be accomplished by holding the right bumper when using a slice. The four main face buttons on the controller represent the four main shot types: flat stroke, slice, topspin, and lob. It won't make sense to slice the ball towards the court's left side if you are already standing close to the boundaries on the same side of the court. Each shot type corresponds to a specific face button on the controller, requiring you to combine timing and power with the proper shot type to put the ball past your opponent (hopefully). As you move your player around the court, you'll trigger a swinging animation depending upon your distance to the ball and whether it is on your forehand or backhand (depending upon if you are playing as a left-handed or a right-handed player). Regardless of the difficulty, it doesn't appear that your strokes' timing is affected at all.Īs you might expect, tennis is about placement, precision, and timing, and all of these aspects are faithfully recreated in Tennis World Tour 2. Difficulty settings only seem to affect the AI, such as slowing down their shots, producing much easier balls to return, and increasing the sheer amount of unforced errors. I made the mistake of going straight into an exhibition match and was thoroughly dominated thanks to the highly challenging AI. The included tutorials attached to the tennis school are, without a doubt, a necessity before playing. Everything from reading your opponent's movements to the ball's trajectory is much more fluid, although it isn't perfect. The animations have doubled, per the developer, which should promote a much smoother gameplay experience.
#Tennis world tour gameplay series
The most notable improvement from the previous entry into the series has been the animation advances. The same studio has now taken center court with Tennis World Tour 2, but will they double fault against themselves or serve an ace for match point? While it was updated to become a reasonably competent tennis game, it was still outmatched by the early 2020 release of AO Tennis 2, again developed by Big Ant Studios. Tennis World Tour suffered the same fate, a barely functional unfinished mess, but was pushed out to market due to the French Open's timing. AO International Tennis was promising yet clunky, but a vast improvement over the rushed to the market and incomplete release of AO Tennis months prior due to the Australian Open's timing. I was scoring break points like nobody’s business, yet wasn’t feeling very comfortable serving.Two years ago, the battle for best tennis game on the market was between AO International Tennis, developed and published by Big Ant Studios, and Tennis World Tour, developed by Breakpoint Studio and published by Nacon, formerly Bigben Interactive. As a result, I’d often prefer games in which I was receiving the ball instead. However, I never managed to fully control my serve in order for it to go wherever I wanted. All you need to do is press any of the face buttons whenever the cursor goes through a small green circle. The act of serving the ball isn’t clunky per se. There is just one thing that I definitely did not like about Tennis World Tour 2‘s gameplay: serving. I could also easily use my favorite real-life tennis strategies, such as slicing the ball in order to get closer to the net and volley the next ball to the opposite side of the court. I felt like I was managing to place my shots wherever I wanted them to go. It has a small bar that can be filled up by holding down one of the stroke buttons, impacting your accuracy and strength. I’m glad to say that this isn’t the case in Tennis World Tour 2.

The original Tennis World Tour was a mess with poor visuals and gameplay that felt like the game was playing itself, not unlike the original AO Tennis.
