{"id":107449,"date":"2020-01-16T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/ao_tennis_2"},"modified":"2020-01-16T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T18:00:00","slug":"review-ao-tennis-2-a-decent-tennis-sim-ruined-by-woeful-performance-on-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/01\/16\/review-ao-tennis-2-a-decent-tennis-sim-ruined-by-woeful-performance-on-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: AO Tennis 2 &#8211; A Decent Tennis Sim Ruined By Woeful Performance On Switch"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/ao_tennis_2\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/ao_tennis_2\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 1 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102133\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102133\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 1 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Despite the fact that there are now officially more games on the Switch eShop than there are people living on the planet (citation needed), it\u2019s fair to say tennis fans have severely limited options when it comes to games on the system.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/mario_tennis_aces\">Mario Tennis Aces<\/a><\/strong> is great and all, but those looking for a more serious representation of the sport are pretty much stuck with <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/tennis_world_tour\">Tennis World Tour<\/a><\/strong>, which is about as entertaining as catching a Roger Federer smash full in the face. With the racquet, not the ball. The glory days of <strong>Virtua Tennis<\/strong>, <strong>Top Spin<\/strong> and even <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/wii\/wii_sports\">Wii Sports<\/a><\/strong> seem to be gone now, so what are tennis fans to do?<\/p>\n<p>Step forward <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/ao_tennis_2\">AO Tennis 2<\/a><\/strong>, an officially-licensed game based on the Australian Open, developed by Melbourne-based Big Ant Studios. It promises to fill that tennis ball shaped hole in Switch owners\u2019 libraries and it juuuust about manages it, though it\u2019s certainly got its fair share of rough edges \u2013 sometimes literally.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 2 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102138\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102138\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 2 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Naturally, given its title, AO Tennis 2 contains a full recreation of the Australian Open event, including polygonal recreations of Melbourne Park and its various courts: the Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne Arena, Margaret Court Arena and Show Court 2 and 3, as well as one of the smaller 500-seat courts (for matches featuring less well-known players). It\u2019s all impressively accurate, right down to the fact that Andy Murray isn\u2019t in it.<\/p>\n<p>Most big names aren\u2019t in here, to be fair, with only a handful of exceptions. There are 25 real-life players to choose from \u2013 12 men and 13 women \u2013 and while it\u2019s clear that a game with a relatively modest budget like this wasn\u2019t going to feature the entire ATP and WTA top 10, some of the entries are still a little odd.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of men, the big name who absolutely <em>is<\/em> present and accounted for is world number one Rafael Nadal. After him, the next highest-ranked players are Gael Monfis and David Goffin, who are currently ranked 10th and 11th respectively. That means no Federer, no Djokovic, no Medvedev and so on. The rest are a mixed bag, some of whom are probably unknown to even tennis die-hards.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 3 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102139\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102139\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 3 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>South African player Kevin Anderson is in here, who\u2019s currently sitting at the heady heights of 121st in the world, and while the UK is still represented despite the absence of Andy Murray; it\u2019s by Kyle Edmund, who\u2019s ranked 69th, which is nice and all but slightly underwhelming. More bewildering is the game\u2019s Australian men\u2019s representative: while we fully appreciate that a game set in Australia and made by an Australian developer is going to have to include one of its own countrymen to the roster, we\u2019d have hoped they could have done better than Thanasi Kokkinakis, who\u2019s currently ranked 199th. There are 11 Aussies ranked higher than him in real life at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>The women\u2019s roster fares a little better, in that both the 1st and 2nd ranked players (Ash Barty and Karolina Pliskova) are included: it probably helps that Barty\u2019s Australian, too. Most of the others are from the top 20 (including the UK\u2019s Johanna Konta) but there are still a few odd outsiders, like Monic Puig (ranked 77th) and another wildly left-field Australian pick, Daria Gavrilova: she\u2019s currently 241st in the world, so her neighbours probably don\u2019t even know who she is. Naturally, there are still some notable names missing here, so there\u2019s no Naomi Osaka and no Serena Williams.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 4 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102142\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102142\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 4 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Thankfully, this can at least be remedied to some extent by the player creation feature, which lets you build your own stars using a needlessly complicated series of facial sliders. If you\u2019re comfortable tweaking your player\u2019s masseter depth, orbicularis oris intensity, nasolabial furrow and malar fat pad \u2013 <em>yes, really<\/em> \u2013 then go for it; otherwise, you may want to head to the game\u2019s Academy section where a bunch of lovely other gamers have already done the hard work for you.<\/p>\n<p>The Academy contains user-made creations, which crucially also includes all those uploaded for the previous <strong>AO Tennis<\/strong> game on PS4 and Xbox One. That means you already have around 20,000 created players to choose from, many of whom look pretty realistic; you can get decent likenesses of Murray, Federer, Williams and everyone else who\u2019s missing this way, and it\u2019s all relatively pain-free.<\/p>\n<p>It isn\u2019t just players you can find at the Academy, either. There\u2019s also a logo creator, where you can upload your own designs to be added to created players\u2019 uniforms, as well as a ridiculously-detailed venue creator where you can make not just a custom court, but an entire custom compound consisting of numerous courts, buildings and other decorations. As before, there are plenty of existing user-created offerings here, giving you a delightfully devilish legal minefield that will let you make your game look far more officially-licensed than it actually is. Goodbye \u2018London Main Court\u2019, hello Wimbledon Centre Court.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 5 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102140\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102140\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 5 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>This huge creation suite is one of the first signs that AO Tennis 2 is potentially punching above its weight. Another even bigger example is the brilliant Career mode, which will last you an absolute <em>age<\/em>. After creating your player and starting off at the bottom of the rankings \u2013 there\u2019s an enormous pile of generic players here, so your initial ranking is well into the thousands \u2013 you have to play your way through a number of smaller events and build up your stats to try and become the champ.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t just a simple case of mindlessly entering tournament after tournament. The Career mode clearly takes some inspiration from the <strong>NBA 2K<\/strong> games by sprinkling plenty of personality into proceedings. There are a bunch of story-based cutscenes that change depending on how well (or badly) you\u2019re playing, and frequent press conferences that have an impact on how both the press and fans feel about you; following a number of temper tantrums we lost a tournament, only to be given a newspaper headline saying the tennis-watching public were delighted we were leaving early.<\/p>\n<p>This is all really impressive stuff, then; a half-decent helping of licensed players, the ability to fill in the gaps with a huge library of user-created characters, a lengthy and detailed career mode and even a fully-fledged venue creation tool. You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at the future of tennis games here until you actually step out onto the court and realise that maybe it\u2019s pushing itself a little <em>too<\/em> far.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 6 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102135\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102135\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 6 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>To be blunt, it looks <em>awful<\/em>. Everything\u2019s fine from a distance but the close-ups are constantly jarring to look at; sometimes your player\u2019s skin looks so rough you\u2019d believe it if they told you they\u2019d dunked their arm in a vat of boiling water before leaving the locker room. Other times there are weird strobe effects that appear to be some sort of lighting bug. Meanwhile, the crowd is laughably low-res; again, this isn\u2019t a problem during actual rallies but given that your player is often seen sitting on a seat in front of the fans, you regularly get a chance to see their terrifyingly serrated saw-like arms up close.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also extremely frustrating to play, at least at first. There\u2019s a learning curve here where you have to hold a button to hit each shot, and the length of time you hold the button determines how accurate the shot is; hold it down too long (or not long enough) and you won\u2019t be able to position it properly. This isn\u2019t a bad idea in theory, but every shot seems to have wildly different timing depending on the context of where your player\u2019s positioned, and it isn\u2019t always clear what type of stroke animation the game\u2019s going to play. Sometimes, if you try to charge up your shot early enough \u2013 when running to the back of the court to catch a lob, for example \u2013 it decides you aren\u2019t going to swing for it <em>at all<\/em>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 7 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102134\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/102134\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"AO Tennis 2 Review - Screenshot 7 of 7\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>The shot timing is made even harder by the abysmal performance. The frame rate\u2019s about as stable as McEnroe in his prime, and you regularly see stutters, freezes and jumps during actual rallies, which is massively off-putting. Switch to handheld mode and everything gets worse; player models get blurrier, background textures become jaggier and the frame rate becomes even less reliable \u2013 at times you can literally see the ball stutter frame-by-frame across the court.<\/p>\n<p>Doubles matches become particularly sluggish; the whole game feels like it slows down, which is confirmed after each rally where the game switches to a cut-scene. When it ends a big \u2018AO\u2019 logo swoops across the screen: this is supposed to be a slick \u201cswoosh\u201d effect, but instead, it happens so slowly that you start to have deep reflections about your existence on the planet and realise that you only have one life and it\u2019s being wasted watching this slow-mo logo swing by with all the velocity of a time-lapse photo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the fact that there are now officially more games on the Switch eShop than there are people living on the planet (citation needed), it\u2019s fair to say tennis fans have severely limited options when it comes to games on the system. Sure, Mario Tennis Aces is great and all, but those looking for a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}