It’s been a long time since I played a good tennis game. A sport so popular deserves a better virtual counterpart than the failed attempt we got in the last few years. AO Tennis 2 tries to fill the void left by the competition.
Australian Open
In case you didn’t know already… the AO in AO tennis 2 stands for Australian Open. It all comes down to the whole naming/image rights thing. Big Ant studios/Big Ben interactive could not secure all the rights to every grand slam out there and decided to focus on just one of the big ones. Not having Roland Garros and Wimbledon to name a few might be a big letdown but more on that later. The courts of the Australian Open are extremely well done in this game. The precision that went into making this virtual counterpart so identical is an example for other sport games to follow.
Creative with licenses
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, AO Tennis 2 only has the rights to represent the Australian Open. With no Andy Murray and no Djokovic, to just name a few, the roster isn’t particularly beefed out with known players. All this might feel futile to a non-sports fan but to those who care, this matters. Big Ant Studios are just not big enough to muster up the cash to pay for all these licenses so they decided to focus on a workaround. They made it possible to design your own players/venues/logo’s and to make all these creations available to the public. As such you can easily download a player made version of legacy player Anna Kournikova or current top athlete Roger Federer.
Adding Wimbledon or even some smaller non-grand slam venues is done just as easily in AO Tennis 2. The fact that the creations made with the AO International Tennis, the previous game in the series, are also available, makes for an already huge library from the start. Some of these fan-created versions are as good as the ones the developers made but some are truly atrocious. An implemented grade system makes it easy to spot the good ones from the bad ones. I hope no legal team takes a closer look at the game because I doubt this way of getting around the licenses is fully legal.
Feels great
Now we got the lack of licenses out the way I want to focus on the actual gameplay. Right of the bat, AO Tennis 2 gameplay feels great. The flow is excellent. Each shot taken is fully your own responsibility. Where you put your body in relation with the oncoming ball and the time you take to charge your shot all have an effect on the outcome. The learning curve to get the timing right is quite high which means AO Tennis 2 offers a real challenge. It’s never unfair because every bad ball comes down to a fault in timing/position/shot choice. This is (virtual) tennis done right.
Career mode
Playing the Australian Open over and over again gets a bit old fast. To counter that feeling, Big Ant added a career mode. Like many sports-titles these days, AO Tennis 2 has its own “path to glory” mode. You create a player with limited abilities and through training, small tournaments and the right choices you gradually get better until you finally get to lift the Australian Open trophy. With many things to manage this mode should be the default mode if you wish to really get good at this game. Playing with a low tier player sure feels more challenging than smashing volleys left and right with Nadal.
Conclusion
The license thing knocks off a few points for AO Tennis 2 but I really like to stress the fact that the gameplay just flows as a good tennis game should flow. Everything is present to have a good time and to feel really fulfilled once you actually win that long and epic rally with a well-placed drop shot.
