AO Tennis 2 Review – Not Quite An Ace
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Article, Reviews
Big Ant Studios’ second attempt is more successful than the first, but not all is well on the courts.
While other major sports see yearly entries that keep fans coming back for more, tennis has had a less than stellar showing this generation with only a smattering of mediocre titles across all three major consoles. Developer Big Ant Studios aimed to improve the presence of the sport with 2018’s AO Tennis, and although I never got a chance to get my hands on it, it’s no secret that it was a colossal disappointment at launch. Though updates improved the experience for some, the game never managed to leave a lasting impression.
Not willing to back down from a challenge, Big Ant has decided to move ahead with the series despite its stumbles, resulting in this year’s simply-titled sequel AO Tennis 2. And while it seems eager to rectify some of the original game’s problems, there are a number of inconsistencies and game mechanics that bring down the enjoyment enough to make it difficult to recommend to anyone who isn’t willing to tough out the bad to get to the good.
What makes or break a tennis game, of course, is its very fundamentals. It’s here that AO Tennis 2 both succeeds and fails at different aspects, nailing the sense of momentum and split-second decision-making of the sport while simultaneously convoluting the control scheme to the point of frustration. This is due to the fact that both player movement and aiming your shots are mapped to the left stick. This results in the game using a bit of auto-movement to take some of the micromanagement out of positioning your player, but it doesn’t consistently feel great in action since there really isn’t a clear indication of when your player switches from manual to automatic movement.
The steep learning curve rears its head when you realize that the game requires you to get good positioning, aim the ball, and hold your shot button just long enough to get an accurate return – all within the span of about a second or two. On higher difficulties, this leaves rallies feeling needlessly cumbersome, resulting in a never-ending feeling of just clumsily getting by.
It might feel a bit like the tension of a real tennis match, but it doesn’t translate to being very fluid for the person playing. All of the tedium can be alleviated by bumping the difficulty down to the lowest setting, almost completely removing the need to prime your shots, but doing so ultimately has the complete opposite effect of making the game feel too easy.
I found Amateur difficulty felt both relaxed enough to enjoy and challenging enough to keep me on my toes in the first couple of hours. But even though moving across the court with fairly generous windows for priming my shots felt more empowering, it still never managed to feel as fluid as it should because the game sometimes just decided not register my movements – a problem I weirdly also encountered in World Tour Tennis a few years back – resulting in my player just kind of standing there like an idiot. This happened frequently enough to dampen my experience, and in a game where every point counts, it’s a completely unacceptable problem.
Despite these irritations, I really like the game’s simplistic assignment of shot types to face buttons that make lining up that a ferocious forehand with beautiful top spin feel satisfying. The game’s solid AI will absolutely run you back and forth with hard hits to the opposite corner of the baseline if you let them, so mastering the different shots is a priority right away. Nailing a perfectly-timed slice to give you some time to reposition can mean the difference between winning and losing a game. It’s quite easy to abuse the AI on the lower difficulties though – a fact that will delight or disappoint you depending on your idea of fun. Before I bumped the difficulty up to the third tier, I commonly won points by just pushing up to the service line after my first return and powering a flat forehand to whichever back corner the AI wasn’t occupying.
I was excited to see some of my favorite players and top seeds like Rafael Nadal and Gael Monfils were playable, but it’s a rather jarring experience to see some high-ranking players and not others.
The underwhelming total lineup of 25 real-life tennis pros is missing many extraordinary modern players like Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, or Maria Sharapova. As fun as it can be to hit the courts with some of these guys and gals, it’s a real bummer you’re not given the opportunity to pit them against their most exciting matchups.
However, thanks to the game’s incredible player creation tools, someone with enough time on their hands has all they need to design playable characters that look identical to real players. As a matter of fact, the online sharing feature allows you to easily download characters made by someone else, and it’s already stocked up with plenty of lookalikes for popular missing players like Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka. This immense level of customization for created players is staggering, and it’s certainly nice to be able to revisit the tools at any time to change things up as you’d like.
And you may find that you want to do that from time to time considering that you’re likely to be spending a lot of time with AO Tennis 2’s Career Mode.
This mode is a joy to play, offering a diverse collection of tasks to complete, matches to take on, and sponsors to earn. When you’re not showing up to press conferences or running training drills, you’ll be tackling tournaments to earn money that can help you improve your player’s various skills. Maybe you want to be known for your deadly backhand, or maybe you want the kind of serve that makes people nervous; pump your favorite skills full of points and prove yourself to the world.
AO Tennis 2 also features a barebones online mode for those looking to take on other tennis fans. Connection issues seemed abundant during my time playing, and people left mid-game regularly, but I managed to have a handful of pleasant matches with a few friendly people. Sadly, I couldn’t find any custom matches, and the Quick Match option results in precisely that: very quick matches. So, while hopping online for some rallies with real people is a nice diversion, it’s hardly the star of the show.
That’s okay, though, because there are plenty of other modes to delve into, and once you adapt to the game’s somewhat clunky control scheme and figure out the right difficulty for your skill level, AO Tennis 2 begins to evolve into a pretty fun time despite its flaws. It’s not an exceptional game, and the steep learning curve is not going to appeal to casual tennis fans, but it’s probably the best tennis title you’re going to find this generation. I just hope Big Ant Studios manage to finally get everything right with a third entry in this series they’re clearly so passionate about.
This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.
THE GOOD
Excellent player creation tools, Compelling and lengthy career mode, Impressive suite of options.
THE BAD
Occasionally unresponsive inputs, Cumbersome controls, Limited licensed players.
Final Verdict:
FAIR
AO Tennis 2 can be a hell of a lot of fun, but if you’re easily annoyed by some inconsistent controls and a steep learning curve, you’re better off avoiding this one.
A copy of this game was provided by Developer/Publisher/Distributor/PR Agency for review purposes. Click here to know more about our Reviews Policy.
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Tagged With: AO Tennis 2, Big Ant Studios, Bigben Interactive, nintendo switch, pc, ps4, Xbox One
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AO Tennis 2 Review — IGN
AO Tennis 2
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By Tristan Ogilvie
Updated: Apr 28, 2020 10:12 pm
Posted: Jan 9, 2020 7:00 am
2018’s AO Tennis may have been a limp first swing that pinged off the frame and dropped well short of the net, but its second attempt at landing in the service box has been delivered with substantially more power and precision.
It’s a better-looking, smoother-playing, and more fully-featured simulation of the sport, one that eradicates the bulk – though not the entirety – of the unforced errors made by its undercooked predecessor. There hasn’t been a transformation this radical in the tennis world since Andre Agassi took off his wig.
Many of these improvements have admittedly come over time; regular post-release patching from developer Big Ant transformed the original AO Tennis from broken mess at launch to a more competent sim some 12 months later, tightening the responsiveness of the controls and adding additional community-focussed features such as a powerful stadium designer. AO Tennis 2 builds upon that restructured foundation, smoothing the on-court experience further with a raft of new player animations and improved ball physics, along with bringing a welcome splash of personality and context to its career mode, a la FIFA’s The Journey.LoadingDespite the fact that the Australian Open is still the only major tournament it’s officially licensed, and its player roster still lacks a number of the big names from both the mens’ and womens’ tours, AO Tennis 2 feels substantially fleshed out at launch since it inherits two years’ worth of community-created content from the previous game.
Thanks to the power of its player, logo and stadium customisation tools, not to mention the hard work of others, I was able to import reasonably convincing community-made recreations of unlicensed players like Andy Murray and Roger Federer, as well as entire stadium complexes based on Roland Garros and Wimbledon, modelled accurately right down to the courtside advertising signs.
These additional user-created players and stadiums bring diversity and realism to the multi-year spanning career mode, although it feels slightly restrictive that you can only import new players at the very beginning of a career. If you’re several years into your career and you spot an amazing user-created Serena Williams shared online, for example, you have to either restart your career if you want to import her or simply go without, which is annoying.LoadingStill, I enjoyed the progression loop of the career mode, which involves completing training drills to raise your various skill level caps, entering tournaments to win prize money, and then investing that prize money either into increasing your player attributes or hiring support staff to give additional buffs to your stamina and the like.
Although the story-driven cutscenes and interactive press conferences have clearly been made on a budget small enough to lace a pair of tennis shoes, they nonetheless do a serviceable job of breaking up the otherwise-static nature of menu management in between tournaments.
Out on the court, AO Tennis 2 provides an exciting and dynamic brand of tennis, for the most part. Individual player styles feel unique – Rafael Nadal is deadly from the baseline while big-serving John Isner is a force in all four corners of the court – and there’s a measurable difference in ball speed and bounce across the different playing surfaces, bringing a greater sense of strategy and variety to each tournament. There’s also a broad spectrum of difficulty modes on offer, with no fewer than eight to choose from; whether you want to drop it down to Rookie for a Virtua Tennis-style hit-and-giggle or ramp it up to Grand Slam for the stiffest possible challenge, options are there for you.
AO Tennis 2 provides an exciting and dynamic brand of tennis, for the most part.
“
That said, there remains an occasional unresponsiveness to the assisted movement scheme that left me feeling unnecessarily frustrated at least a handful of times in every match I played, even on the more modest difficulty settings. While there is a menu slider to adjust how much your player automatically moves to meet the ball, I could never find the absolute sweet spot. The more I played AO Tennis 2, the more adept I became with the timing required to swerve an aggressive topspin winner down the sideline or rush to the net to nail a sharply angled volley, yet I was never a hundred percent sure as to when my player would randomly abort an overhead smash or leisurely sidestep across the court when I wanted them to sprint flat-out or dive. Assisted movement certainly makes sense in AO Tennis 2 considering you’re controlling both the position of your player and the shot aiming reticule with the same thumbstick, but I feel like the existing system is just shy of being optimised to the point of being consistently reliable.
Additionally, there were a handful of times where animation glitches helped AI players hit balls that were seemingly nowhere near them, which only furthered my frustration.LoadingThese sporadic shortcomings never became enough of a hindrance to make me want to throw my controller, although I certainly McEnroe’d a lot of virtual racquets thanks to AO Tennis 2’s addictive reaction animations that can be triggered in between points. Giving a respectful wave of acknowledgement to the crowd or throwing a sarcastic thumbs up to the chair umpire provides some colour to each point that I appreciated in the absence of any in-game commentators, and it’s a nice touch that your behaviour on court directly influences your potential sponsorship deals in the career mode.
Your behaviour on court directly influences your potential sponsorship deals in the career mode.
“
Elsewhere, AO Tennis 2’s broadcast presentation has been enhanced with a number of match metrics that appear on screen, such as win-predictor percentages and time-pressure stats, and the option to challenge a line call returns from the previous game.
Although from the perspective of the wide broadcast-style camera, deciding which close calls look in or out in your opponent’s half of the court seems like guesswork at best.
While the original AO Tennis may have launched with enough squandered potential to make even Nick Kyrgios shake his head, AO Tennis 2 has taken a major stride forward to more closely resemble an Ash Barty-style all-rounder. It could yet benefit from more balancing and bug fixing post-release, but as it stands AO Tennis 2 is the best videogame simulation of the sport in years.
In This Article
AO Tennis 2
Big Ant Studios
Rating
ESRB: Everyone
Platforms
Xbox OneNintendo SwitchPlayStation 4PC
AO Tennis 2 Review
good
AO Tennis 2 is a better-looking, smoother-playing and more fully-featured follow-up to the original.
Tristan Ogilvie
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Ao Tennis 2 for PS4 — price history, screenshots, sales • Norge
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Ao Tennis 2
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kr 299.40
kr99.80
−80%
kr 499
until 03/02/2023 02:59
Price change history for the game
(PlayStation Store)
Lowest price: kr 99.
80
,
PS+:
kr 99.80
— Release date:
January 9, 2020
Description
A PLAYING FIELD MADE FOR YOU, BY YOU
• Use the comprehensive Academy editing suite to create a player just like YOU as well as your own courts, or you can download thousands of community creations.
THE BEST PLAYERS IN THE WORLD
• See how you compare to the big names on the ATP & WTA circuits, including Rafael Nadal, Ash Barty, Angelique Kerber and many more.
A COMPLETELY REDESIGNED CAREER MODE
• Set out to conquer the world rankings in a singles career or in doubles with a friend. Manage your Reputation, sponsors and performance to reach the top.
NEW GAME MODES
• Relive legendary matches or create new challenges using the scenario editor.
Information taken from the official site of the PlayStation Store, all rights reserved.
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AO Tennis 2 system requirements — Will it work for you? — Check your PC!
Updated: February 18, 2023
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On this page you will find the system requirements for AO Tennis 2 on PC (Windows). We regularly monitor the relevance and update the data.
The AO Tennis 2 requirements below are divided by operating system and contain information about the processor, video card, RAM and disk space required to play AO Tennis 2.
Contents of page
- Will AO Tennis 2 run on my PC?
- Windows requirements
- About the game
- Questions
- Buy AO Tennis 2 Cheap
Will AO Tennis 2 run on my PC?
According to our tests, 55% of people can run this game on their PC.
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The minimum requirements for AO Tennis 2 on Windows are Windows 10 x64.
Your processor must be at least Intel Core i3-3210 / AMD Athlon II X4 555. Minimum RAM size is 4 GB. As for the video card, it should be at least Graphics. You also need to have 15 GB of free disk space.
If you are considering the recommended requirements of AO Tennis 2 for Windows, then the operating system is Windows 10 x64. Recommended Processor — Intel Core i5-4200 / AMD Phenom II X4 970 or more powerful equivalent. Recommended RAM is 8 GB. And the video card is AMD Radeon R9 390X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 with minimum 4GB Memory.
About the game