Tennis 2K2

"Good, but it could so easily have been 10/10."

Other people have sung the praises for this game, rightly so, but I would just like to point out a few niggles I had that kind of spoilt the whole experience for me.

My first gripe is that you can still play only one set. It would have been so easy to implement a best-of-three or best-of-five (see Mario Tennis for N64 or Gameboy Color/Advance) but yet, they left it out! The excuse is that the game is arcade-based, but I find that too lame. You're not playing it in the Arcade to start with and when playing against a friend, the excitement only starts after the first set, when you're dying to continue winning or, if you lost it, win the next one and square the score, hoping for a decider. Playing just one set makes the outcome more a matter of luck than skill.
In real life all tournaments are at least best of three, some even best of five. Seeing that higher levels in this game replicate Grand Slam tournaments it should allow us to play more realistically. It would have been nice to have the option!!

The second complaint is that you have to create a male and a female player. Let's say you want to play with a friend or you have a family member, who wants to train up the second character. If you're both boys (or both girls), one of you will have to create a player not based on themselves. If I want to play against my best friend, I don't want to be the girl and neither does he, so we both have to play as a preset character. Again, it would have been nice to have the option!!

And finally, why is there no demo mode? All players in the game have their own characteristics, so it'd have been nice to just watch them in action and maybe re-create a tournament in which you then can take part yourself. You play your game, hopefully win it, and then - as in real life - go on to watch the opponents. The game does have a tournament mode, but opponents come up randomly and for just one set, it's not the same! As before, it's not difficult to implement, give me the option!!

Apart from that, it's a good game. I like the improved World Tour, where your efforts are rewarded even if you do not always clear the task. Graphics are superb and fluid.

Computer-AI is so-so. I noticed that in doubles play often the computer characters behave rather stupidly and occasionally just refuse to hit the ball into the empty area for an easy point, but that may improve at higher levels (I'm still working my way up).

I think Tennis 2K2 is a very good game and if the above doesn't bother you and all you want is a quick fix, read this as 9/10 or even 10/10. But I would have preferred more options based on real life tennis and that spoils it a little for me.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/01, Updated 11/29/01