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Tennis World Tour 2: Complete Edition Review — A Mid-Level Contender

Big Ant Studios found their audience with niche sporting simulators this last decade. Between Ashes Cricket and Rugby League Live , recent years have seen a greater focus on tennis, with the team offering the enjoyable AO Tennis 2 early last year.

In September 2020, they were back at it, this time launching Tennis World Tour 2 in collaboration with Nacon. Releasing to mixed reviews , Tour 2’s found a second lease on life with a next-gen “Complete Edition” for PS5 and Xbox Series X, which makes for a vast improvement over the original release, even if that improvement is relative.

Tennis World Tour 2: Complete Edition Review — A Mid-Level Contender

If you’re simply after a quick tennis fix, Exhibition Mode is your go-to here, letting you play with up to three other players locally in singles and doubles matches. In this mode, there are 48 different Tennis players to choose from, including Grand Slam winners Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, and Maria Sharapova. Sadly, a few notable icons, like the Williams sisters and Novak Djokovic, are missing, but the line-up remains impressive despite their absences.

Online multiplayer is also available, as are several pre-set and player-hosted tournaments. There’s also Tennis School, a training area filled with tests to keep your skills sharp.

However, the real focus lies in Career Mode, creating an original character in your journey to win a Grand Slam. You complete different events – including exhibition matches and tournaments. Those come with an entry fee, and higher fees mean higher winnings, should you succeed.

Gradually, you increase your career level, building up a reputation and signing with new agents, who offer performance buffs like greater strength or increased XP. Just be careful of your fatigue meter, which builds up after taking on events and impacts performance. Taking timely breaks to keep yourself in peak condition is a must.

Once you’re on the court, you have two shot options: precision and power. Providing you’re near the ball, racket swings occur automatically, but a good precision shot requires tapping a button as the ball gets closer. For power, you must hold that button down, releasing at the right moment for a devastating volley.

It sounds straightforward, but Tour 2 gets surprisingly challenging, and that difficulty can spike between matches. Even if you force your opponent into errors, moving them to the other side of the court, misjudging your shot timing can undo your hard work. Those seconds are key to taking a point or landing out of bounds.

That’s not to understate the surprisingly technical level of gameplay depth here, a depth that forces you to consider your strategy seriously. It’s not as arcade-like as more notable games like Mario Tennis – and it replicates real tennis to a decent extent.

Of course, that precise, realistic approach won’t sit well with everyone. To help you out, Tour 2 also includes a Cards system, allowing you to boost your own skills during matches – improving endurance, power, precision, and agility, for example – or reduce an opponent’s. You can hold five cards at once and save preset decks, buying them from a Card Shop for coins earned in career mode. Cards can even be sold for extra currency.

Since they’re best used in a pinch, they add a good layer of strategy to the gameplay.

Tennis World Tour 2: Complete Edition — The Bottom Line

• Captures the feeling of tennis well.
• Plenty of players and courts to choose from.
• Smooth performance.
• Numerous upgrades over the previous edition.
• Difficulty level is uneven.
• Some character models need improvements.
• Gameplay is quite technical.

As for next-gen improvements, Nacon has done an impressive job, and owners of last-gen’s Ace Edition can upgrade to the Complete Edition for free. Running at 60 frames-per-second in 4K, the Complete Edition also benefits from faster loading times, ray tracing, and enhanced particle effects.

It looks great, and that presentation’s only let down by a few off-base character models, which could’ve used some extra detail. Otherwise, all previous DLC is included with six new characters (including Murray and Sharapova), four additional stadiums, new cosmetics, and additional animations, too.

If you weren’t sold on Tennis World Tour 2 previously, Nacon’s next-gen upgrade won’t change your mind, but there’s an enjoyable simulator here and the Complete Edition is the best way to play. If you’re a serious tennis fan, this one comes recommended.

[Note: Nacon provided the copy of Tennis World Tour 2 used for this review.]

Tennis World Tour 2 Review: A Solid Serve To Tennis Fans

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While Top Spin 4 remains as many players’ choice for the best tennis video game, my personal experience with the genre remains limited to the titles released on the Sega Dreamcast, which included Virtua Tennis and Tennis 2K2. I never had the chance to check out the original Tennis World Tour when it released in 2018, but was intrigued by what the sequel had to offer after attending a preview event for the game. Tennis World Tour 2 is no doubt one of the most authentic virtual tennis titles available right now, but it comes with an incredibly steep learning curve that may turn off more casual players just looking for a fun tennis game.

Top Spin For The Win

Tennis World Tour 2 is unapologetically tough, requiring players to truly understand the ins and outs of tennis to be effective during matches. This is something to be applauded in regards to its authenticity, but is also a very off-putting element for bringing in new players. An in-depth tutorial mode exists that allows for new players to get a feel for the game’s mechanics, but speaking as someone who had no idea what they were doing to begin with, while the tutorial mode is in-depth, it definitely wasn’t enough for me to pick up and jump successfully into an exhibition match or any of the game’s other modes.

Unlike other more rally-based tennis titles, Tennis World Tour 2 requires pinpoint accuracy with its timing. Charging up a power hit and releasing a split-second too soon, or slightly mistiming a top-spin or slice will usually result in poor ball placement, giving your opponent the upper hand, or, worse, a failure to even land the ball in the court of play. Once you get over the hurdle of actually learning how to properly time your hits, matches become a lot more fun - whether your opponent is keeping you on your toes defensively, or you’re controlling the flow of the match yourself (hopefully leading to a point). It’s almost like you’re controlling the ball rather than your actual character, of which there is an impressive roster to choose from.

Related: Tennis World Tour 2 Preview: A Good First Serving

36 players are available to you, with Marat Safin and Gustavo Kuerten as the two additional legendary characters. All of the newly added character animations and characters themselves looking great graphically. This extends into each of the arenas, which can be customized to fit whatever style of play you’re going for, such as the different types of courts that can be played on. The realistic aesthetics certainly add to Tennis World Tour 2’s goal of an authentic experience.

For The Fans

While realistic tennis mechanics are at the core of the Tennis World Tour 2 experience, a deck-building component provides a fun “Ultimate Team” type of element to the game. You’ll essentially collect these limited-use cards that are playable as in-match buffs that can give your player a slight leg up on the competition. Cards can be earned through gameplay, as well as purchased using the in-game currency. I’m personally not a huge player of Ultimate Team-type of games or game modes, but the passive abilities do add a fun fantasy element and different strategy to Tennis World Tour 2’s otherwise authentic-to-the-extreme experience.

The career mode in Tennis World Tour 2 is as expected, taking your player from an amateur to superstar and making career decisions song the way that ultimately dictates how quickly (and effectively) your player rises through the ranks. Online mode, however, is where Tennis World Tour 2 thrives in terms of its replayability - which is an apparent marked improvement upon the online functionality of the original game - as well as the addition of a doubles mode, which is brand new to the franchise.

The truth of the matter is that most Tennis World Tour 2 players will likely be seeking out the game specifically as fans of tennis or tennis video games. Ultimately, Tennis World Tour 2 succeeds in what it sets out to accomplish. The authentic look and feel of the entire game is something that hardcore fans of the sport can appreciate. Unfortunately, the game is also limited in that same sense, as the learning curve prevents more casual players from taking the court in a quickly accessible way. That said, if you’re willing to stick with it, Tennis World Tour 2 serves as an overall satisfying tennis title.

A PlayStation 4 copy of Tennis World Tour 2 was provided to TheGamer for this review. Tennis World Tour 2 is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, and will be making its way to Nintendo Switch on October 15.

Tennis World Tour 2

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Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition Xbox Series X|S Review

Many moons ago, I used to be an avid amateur tennis player and loved nothing more than tuning into Wimbledon to watch the Brits disappoint on the world stage. Ahh, memories. However, as with most sports last year the pandemic put a stop to that, instead leaving a void that was partially filled by the release of Tennis World Tour 2 . Now, just six months later, it’s back with some improvements.

Enter Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition . This version of the game comes with all the content available for the original, as well as graphical enhancements. This means it has 4K enabled visuals which run at 60fps along with ray tracing and faster loading times versus the original. As a result, it’s only playable on the Xbox Series X|S consoles. 

As soon as you boot the game up, you’re taken on a brief tour of your own, whether you like it or not. This takes you through the menus, explaining what’s on offer in the game. Before starting properly, you can swing by the Tennis School to practice the basics, but why stop there? There are also advanced moves to master before you head out into the competitive world. You can also return later to take on challenges that you unlock as you play the game.

Controls are the bedrock of a game such as this, and in Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition it’s all about timing. The better this is, the more likely that you’ll place the ball where you want it to go. 

Returning shots is pretty straightforward, as is serving. However, directing the ball feels a little out of your control at times, whilst at others it’ll land exactly where you planned. It’s hit and miss, but the inconsistent nature is highlighted when you are trying to nail the target boxes at the Tennis School. In matches it soon becomes clear that if you want your first serve to land legally, you’re best not to try to put any direction on it at all, because it’ll nearly always end up being a fault.

It’s difficult, borderline impossible, to figure out how to read your opponent so you stand a chance of reaching their return shots to get a rally going. However, if you go the wrong way, even for a split second, you’ve had it. This is because you need to sprint right up to the ball to return it; your player won’t reach out to try and take the shot even when close by. To make matters worse, in doubles you’ll see your partner make these shots with seemingly inhumanly quick reactions that you will never manage to match. Even on the normal difficulty, your opponents are no pushovers. However, seemingly more so in exhibition matches, they could barely string two shots together before hitting the ball out of bounds. It was a rare pleasure to get a decent rally going. Even when playing on the same difficulty across several matches, my experience was wildly inconsistent. Overall, this combination results in a stunted, off-pace experience.

As you’d expect, you can make use of your full moveset to beat the toughest opponents. This means slicing, lobbing, pulling off drop shots and more to take the match.

Any tennis game worth its salt is built around a solid career mode and Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition offers a mixed experience at best. You can choose from several options which determine how close to the real thing your career will feel, in terms of match length and the ability to replay events. However, you can alter the difficulty of the game from the pause menu at any time.

Creating your own player to take on the career mode is realised with a fairly basic, but effective design menu. There are a fair few preset choices from facial features to build type for you to select. In a nice touch, you can also choose signature traits for your avatar from the world’s greats, such as serve styles and receive stances. Some look very similar, but there is enough variety to make it worth having a look through.

Of course, you can also unlock new clothing and equipment to buy as you progress through your career. There are many licensed options alongside generic ones, which always adds a good touch of realism to a sports game.

Once you have created your player, you will be ready to start whacking some tennis balls around. You can choose which events to participate in alongside viewing your calendar to build a schedule for your player. You can participate in exhibition matches, tournaments, charity matches and take time out to train if you wish. You will occasionally need to rest depending on how fatigued your player is.

Matches run at various lengths as indicated by how many stars are attached to the event. These vary pretty widely, however short encounters lack the tension of longer matches. All are played in front of an audible crowd, but still lack atmosphere as there is no commentary or score announcements by the umpire. There is, however, a Hawkeye-style system in place meaning each player has the usual three challenges to dispute any close calls on the line. 

Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition also attempts to introduce a twist on the age old game of tennis. You can purchase card packs from the in-game store to give your player an advantage or adversely affect your opponent. You can buy more with coins earned from playing the game and I’m happy to say there are no microtransactions here.

You equip your hands pre-match and can save preset templates for tougher matches, using your most powerful cards. They will affect one of four areas of yours or your opponents game – these being endurance, power, precision and agility – and only last for a certain amount of time.

Your D-Pad buttons allow you to use cards in match; each is assigned to a different direction. Pressing one of these once allows you to view the card, and hitting them twice in quick succession sees you use it. However, the cards will only pop up for a second so you’ll need to be a fast reader when deciding which one to use.

The attributes that the cards influence link to your player profile, whose stats you can track throughout your career. It’s these elements that make Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition more of an arcade sports game, as opposed to a realistic sim. In this way, it’s akin to a toned-down version of Mario Tennis but without the moustached plumbers and fire-breathing lizard creatures.

If I’m honest, I appreciated this attempt to deepen the game’s tactics, but it didn’t really come off for me. My experience in the game wasn’t noticeably affected by any of the cards when used. The controls aren’t fine-tuned enough to notice a 6% accuracy reduction, for example. Instead, what looks like a thoroughly tactical gameplay mechanic on the surface, ends up being mostly superficial.

There are a generous amount of game options in Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition. You can play offline exhibition matches, which essentially work in the same way as a free play mode. Here you can choose the match conditions. As well as this, you can play official tournaments, such as the Roland Garros, or make your own. You can “simulate” matches in each round if you don’t want to play them, which speeds things up a bit.

Online play is available in Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition and comes packed with a fair few options. You can choose from custom leagues and quick matches as well as organised eSports events – at least when these become available. This is an exciting sign of things to come, but sadly I struggled to matchmake online after several attempts across all modes, failing to find any opponents. It’s a shame, as Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition looks to be aiming high with a meaty, progressive online mode but it can’t happen without a thriving player community.

Despite offering many ways to play, the gameplay limitations make it feel like you are playing the same match several times over, albeit in a different skin. Considering we’re talking £49.99 for the game, there isn’t enough here to make you feel as if you’re getting value for money.

Considering Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition has been optimised, the textures and environments still lack detail. This is especially apparent on the artificial surfaces – they look hideous. Apart from a few subtle changes, the courts look very similar no matter where in the world you are playing. The players are also oddly shiny, their hair looking like that of a LEGO man. That’s before mentioning some of the faces they pull, which are quite terrifying.

In summary, Tennis World Tour 2 – Complete Edition on Xbox Series X is fun for a time, but falls short of the line. Even if you’re a fan of the sport, there’s not enough here to justify the price tag.

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Tennis World Tour 2 Hands-On Preview: Gameplay Trails Impressive Visual Upgrades

Tennis World Tour 2 is in an interesting spot right now. In a way, it’s that mysterious player you see from afar on the tennis court. It looks great with sweatbands and fresh new athletic gear. It moves gracefully around the court, and it just looks like an athlete. As you get closer, you see it wind up with great form and rip a shot with high velocity — only that shot is nowhere close to being in. You appreciate the guts of what’s here, but this is still clearly a work in progress.

The original game was released in a barely-finished state back in 2018 and, despite some patches to try and save it from its messy origins, it remained barely playable online and was a disappointment for a community desperate for someone to make the next great tennis video game .

Now, over two years later, we will get a sequel to that title in September on PS4, Xbox One and PC, and then a month later on Nintendo Switch. The first thing worth mentioning is that it’s been made by Big Ant Studios, the very same developer that worked on what has to be considered Tennis World Tour 2 ‘s biggest direct competition, AO Tennis 2 .

So how does Tennis World Tour 2 differentiate itself while having that same company working on it? I recently had the chance to attend a brief virtual event with Clement Nicolin from publisher Nacon (formerly BigBen Interactive SA) and spend some time with a PC preview build of the game. Here are some of my thoughts on where the game shows potential and where it could really use some improvement.

Tennis World Tour 2 does have an in-game tutorial, it just wasn’t made available for people like myself to use in this preview build. This made it harder to evaluate the game at times because a lot of time was spent trying to figure out how certain things worked through trial and error.

Suffice to say, I found the game to be difficult and frustrating a times. After getting beat soundly on normal difficulty several times without my opponent so much as breaking a sweat, I decided to turn the difficulty setting all the way down to very easy — the lowest setting — and still found my opponent regularly crushing winners that I had no way to reach. This is the part where I say that I’m by no means the greatest gamer in the world or anything, and consider myself to be in fact almost perfectly average, but I do recall having no problems beating the CPU in Tennis World Tour on the default difficulty.

But even on the lowest difficulty, where you’d expect the new timing mechanic would be at its most forgiving and that the majority of shots would result in either “Good” or “Perfect” feedback no matter what, hitting accurate shots did not feel all that much easier. The same goes for your opponent, who you’d think would be more likely to make unforced errors or have trouble getting to balls on such a low difficulty, but instead they were still able to unleash almost as many of those brilliant returns down the line as they are on harder difficulties.

In fact, at one point I cobbled enough points together to finally win a game and thought I might be ready to try a slightly harder difficulty — only to realize that I was already at normal difficulty unbeknownst to me. So there’s clearly not enough of a delineation between these current difficulties to even so much as tell them apart.

That being said, obviously if the tutorials and such had been accessible this most likely would have been smoothed out, so the end consumer should not have as many growing pains as I did. At the same time, it does seem like some folks will have to train themselves up, which may actually excite some of them.

Hitting The Ball

Switching over to a more timing-based mechanism for your ground strokes — with Top Spin 4 (the crown jewel of last generation’s tennis simulations) mentioned by Clement Nicolin as a point of reference for Tennis World Tour 2—the expectation would be that there would be more skill and consistency required to keep your opponent on their heels. However, this system definitely needs some more refinement if it’s going to result in healthy competition and long-term fun.

There seems to be far too much variance and randomness in the results of your shots, and the feedback that’s provided doesn’t really do much to let you know exactly what you’ve done wrong. The feedback employs a scale that runs from “Too Soon” to “Good” to “Perfect” to “Too Late,” which are all easy enough to understand as words but they don’t tell you whether you’ve pushed the button to swing your racket too soon or too late, or whether it’s the release of your shot that’s too soon or too late.

I spent a lot of time trying out different things to see how to get the best results from this feedback, and what I eventually settled on was that there really doesn’t seem to be that much rhyme or reason to any of it. I tried pushing the button very early and would sometimes get “Perfect” feedback, and I tried pushing the button very late and would sometimes get “Perfect” feedback. This was also true of “Too Soon” and “Too Late” feedback. Even after finishing quite a few games, I was just never able to figure out exactly what I was supposed to do to get optimal results on a regular basis.

This lack of consistency or logic also extended to the direction of shots as well, where I could never seem to get the ball to go where I wanted on my opponent’s side of the court. It obviously makes some sense to not be able to control where your ball is headed as much when you’re on the run and scrambling to even get to the ball and put it back over the net, but there doesn’t appear to be enough of a difference between aiming your shot from a full sprint and standing still. I was sometimes able to get a pinpoint cross-court shot while sprinting in the opposite direction, but then also struggled many times to put a point away while I was standing still and had an entire side of the court open — opting instead to annoyingly hit the ball back in the middle so my opponent could easily play it back.

The new service mechanic fares a little better, though it does take a little bit of time to figure out. You decide on the angle of your toss and the direction of your serve in the first part before applying power in the second. If you don’t hit the correct angle on your toss, it will make it more difficult to hit the ball accurately when you add power. Again, at least this is how I think the whole thing works. All I truly know is that it did produce more dynamic results with your serve (I even got a few lets), though it does also seem to have a bit of randomness baked in as well. Even when I was able to execute everything perfectly to the best of my knowledge and hit some nice serves on the lines with maximum power, I was still never able to ace my opponent.

Graphics & Presentation

The game has clearly improved quite a bit in the visuals department, both in how the players move and react on the court, and in the way a match is presented.

Claiming to have doubled the number of animations in the game, players do feel more fluid in their movements and transitions for the most part thanks to a new in-house game engine. There are still instances where the game feels like it’s on rails a little bit, especially when your player gallops across the court to lunge for a ball in spite of minimal input on your part, but this is perhaps a direct reaction to how the original’s gameplay was almost “too realistic” according to Nicolin in how hard it was for players to change directions. At the very least, animations should now at least match the types of shots, which Nicolin admitted was an issue in the last game.

The presentation has taken a step forward as well, with a nice selection of close-ups that highlight how much the players resemble their real-life counterparts (though we only had access to four pros from the roster). While getting dominated by Garbine Muguruza over and over again, I became increasingly enraged by the shots of her grinning after I hit the ball way out for the umpteenth time and that’s a testament to how lifelike she felt across the court from me.

The ability to challenge calls is a welcomed addition, with the exciting flyover overhead camera showing you whether a shot managed to catch the line or not. I saw a nice mix of in and out calls from the CPU’s challenges in the matches I played, so it’s clear they aren’t correct every time they issue a challenge.

The sounds of the ball and the crowd are serviceable if not spectacular, and the intonations of the chair umpire’s announcements of the score add some immersion. The opportunity to pull a McEnroe and engage in some spirited arguments with the umpire would have been nice considering how terribly things were going for me on the court, but that’s probably too much to expect from a game.

MyPlayer & Card System

Though we didn’t get access to the MyPlayer creator or the game’s career mode, we were told that the creation suite has been expanded to even include details like serve routine, which is great news considering the original game was so limited in this area that your player couldn’t help but end up looking the same as others. Once you’ve decided on what you want your player’s appearance to be, you’ll then be able to use them both in career mode and in online play.

As you play and earn in-game currency, you can purchase packs of cards that can be used to either boost your player’s skills or lower your opponent’s abilities during a match. Though Nicolin claimed that this was meant to replicate times in a real match when a player is “feeling better,” it’s hard not to come away thinking that’s a pretty flimsy justification for including a rather arcade element. Nevertheless, there’s at least some strategy to the whole system. Separated into four categories (endurance, speed, precision and agility), selecting when to use these boosts, and which boosts to even include in your hand before any given match, allows you to help play to your strengths or perhaps expose an opponent’s weaknesses.

These cards not only provide boosts for certain attributes, but they also come with a duration and a set number of times that the card can be played. This creates further strategy where you’re forced to decide whether you’d rather have a card in your hand that will provide a slight boost for a full match, or a card that will give you a more substantial boost for just a point but you can play it maybe 10 times during a match.

Quick Hitters

• The game has added doubles play both locally and online, though you can only play online if you have two players locally on one system, so there’s no way of matching up with and finding the new doubles partner of your dreams.
• Nicolin says that having more stable online play has been a huge focus for T ennis World Tour 2 , recognizing that the original’s lack of online functionality drove many people away.
• There will be 36 players and 2 legends in the game at launch, many of which have already been announced at this point. It’s best to follow the game’s official Twitter for all further announcements on these. You can also play on all the surfaces of real tennis (from clay to grass) and choose what time of day and kind of climate you want for an exhibition match.
• Official tournaments that haven’t been announced yet will be in the game.
• You can now stop a match in the middle of it and then pick it up again later, for those interested in playing longer matches but might not have the time to do it in one shot.
• New game mode Tiebreak Tens will allow people to play quicker matches.

Tennis World Tour 2

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Tennis World Tour 2 | Gameplay Reveal

Critic Reviews for Tennis World Tour 2

Thesixthaxis.

Tennis World Tour 2 is a solid all-round tennis game, and the inclusion of the wildcard system offers an additional and entertaining tactical layer to consider as you play. It's just a shame that some minor issues hold it back from being great.

Read full review

TWT2 feels unfinished, underdeveloped and somewhat soulless in some aspects. The swing mechanic might be a good idea conceptually, but it falls short of supplying that satisfaction that is transferred from simply hitting the ball in a tennis video game. Couple that with the malnourished feature set and you have one of the most disappointing tennis video games in a long while.

A good tennis simulation that, despite a few flaws and frustrating controls, has managed to achieve a much better result than the original game.

Review in Italian | Read full review

God is a Geek

Tennis World Tour 2 has gameplay that takes a while to master, but the healthy roster and well-designed courts offers a lot for tennis fans.

Nintendo Life

Tennis World Tour 2 is a simulation style affair that demands much from its players but doesn't reciprocate with a game that's capable of matching their efforts. Flaky AI and a lack of basic player animations leads to core gameplay here that feels rough and unsatisfying for the most part. Matches often descend into a procession of double faults, there's absolutely zero net play, and no matter how much practice you put in, things always feel like they're out of your control. There is a decent selection of modes here and the fundamental ideas behind the gameplay could have made for a good time, but a lack of finesse in how these things have been implemented mean this one is best avoided by all but the most foolhardy of tennis fans.

GamingTrend

Tennis World Tour 2 on the PlayStation 5 is the definitive way to experience this realistic simulation title. While it does have quite a few flaws considering the package, there's still a lot to love for those looking for a tennis game with a learning curve.

PlayStation Universe

A highly unsatisfying and directionless tennis game, with an abysmal character creator and career mode. Steer well clear and buy AO Tennis 2, bizarrely made by the exact same team responsible for this monstrosity.

The Games Machine

Tennis World Tour 2 improves upon its disastrous predecessor, but cannot completely make us forget its flaws because it's based on the same creaky structure. It can be fun, but you shouldn't expect perfection.

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Tennis World Tour 2 Preview: Serving Up Something Better

With a metacritic score of just 45 on ps4 , i thinks it’s safe to say that 2018’s tennis world tour was a major letdown..

Developed by Breakpoint Studio and published by Bigben Interactive, now known as Nacon, things were marginally improved with 2019’s Roland-Garros Edition . But it was fundamentally the same game, and so even with additional content and the odd tweak here and there, it still didn’t satisfy tennis fans in the way that it should.

Nacon is hoping to make amends for the disappointing first game with Tennis World Tour 2 . It’s got a new developer on board, Big Ant Studios, who also developed the ill-received AO Tennis and its improved sequel , and it’s utilising a new game engine that allows for more fluid animation and more realistic physics. Overall, it hopes that games will be more dynamic, require more skilful play, and ultimately, simply be more fun to play.

Tennis World Tour 2 is set to feature a whole host of other improvements, too. Doubles is in, allowing players to team up with a computer controlled teammate or get a friend or family member in on the act. And yes, doubles can be played online, with Nacon stating that much work has gone into making online multiplayer more stable. Tennis aficionados will also be happy to hear that the court surface will have an effect on play now. When playing on grass, for example, the ball won’t bounce as high. It’s something to take into account as you head into each match.

Going hands-on with a preview build of Tennis World Tour 2 , I can confirm that it does indeed look a lot nicer, and animations are noticeably improved. More importantly, it feels a lot better to play; it’s more dynamic and natural. You notice that rallies are shorter compared to the endless to-ing and fro-ing of the first game. Though to master Tennis World Tour 2 you really need to get the timing of shots down.

A new timing-based gameplay system means that if you release the button to swing a little too early or late, the ball won’t go exactly where you want it to. Totally mistime your release and it may even go out or hit the net. On the other hand, if your timing is good or, even better, perfect, you can put your opponent out on a limb. It’s trickier than it sounds, perhaps trickier than it should be, in fact; you don’t always feel like you have time, plus there are no indicators to help you along the way.

While Tennis World Tour 2 does seemingly provide a good game of tennis, there are some things aside from its timing demands that are also less than stellar. Take its new card system, for example, which effectively replaces the skills found in the original game. It introduces an element of strategy, as you’re able to assign consumable cards to your deck before each match and then call them into action by using the d-pad.

They have such effects as boosting the strength of certain shots for one set, or improving your stamina for a whole match. They can also hinder your opponent’s abilities. Unfortunately, the system seems fiddly to manage while playing, and using your cards effectively often feels like pot-luck unless you have a deep understanding of the player you’re up against. Simply gaining bonuses from having them equipped would have been better.

And then there’s the AI of the computer-controlled opponents, which seems a bit iffy. Sometimes the AI is as dumb as a bag of bricks, making multiple double faults or not even attempting to return the ball. Other times they’re godlike, even on the very easy setting. For some reason, they seem particularly good when you’re serving. It could just be that I’m a rubbish player, but not having access to tutorials in the preview build to master the game’s mechanics, it’s a hard one to judge.

Still, Tennis World Tour 2 does already appear to be a vast improvement on the first game. Especially when you consider some of these issues won’t apply when facing real human opponents. There’s still some work to be done to get Tennis World Tour 2 at the top of its game, though, and a lot will hinge on how good its career mode is and if its online offerings are in fact more reliable. With what little competition there is, however, it’ll probably turn out to be the best of what’s available regardless.

When it launches this September on PS4, Xbox One and PC, Tennis World Tour 2 will feature 36 players, with an additional two up for grabs if you preorder. It has two new courts, too, as well as a new Hawk-Eye system so you can challenge decisions if you think they were made in error. A Switch version of the game will also follow in October.

Tennis World Tour 2 launches 22nd September on PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Preorder Tennis World Tour 2 on Amazon

Co-owner and editor-in-chief

An avid gamer since discovering the wonders of the Acorn Electron in the '80s, Rich has nearly played more games than he's had hot dinners. Not one to put all his eggs in one basket, Rich is happy to play games of all genres, but he particularly enjoys racing games and anything that's full of non-stop action, especially if it includes a good dose of humour, horror or crudeness!

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2024 US Open odds, picks, predictions, draw, dates: Proven tennis expert fading Carlos Alcaraz in best bets

Tennis handicapper jose onorato has revealed his men's us open 2024 picks, predictions and best bets.

The final grand slam tennis tournament of the year has arrived, with the 2024 US Open set to begin on Monday morning. Defending champion Novak Djokovic will take aim at the 25th major win of his career, as he returns after winning the gold medal in the Paris Olympics. Djokovic is +240 (risk $100 to win $240) in the 2024 US Open odds, while Carlos Alcaraz is the +210 favorite. Alcaraz has won the last two grand slams this season, and he won the 2022 US Open. 

World No. 1 Jannik Sinner won the Australian Open at the beginning of the season, and he is one of the 2024 US Open contenders at +320. A total of 32 men's singles matches are set to be played on Monday, Aug. 26, highlighted by Djokovic vs. Radu Albot with an estimated start time of 7:15 p.m. ET at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The first matches will begin at 10 a.m. ET. Before making any 2024 US Open picks for the men's singles tournament, you need to see who proven SportsLine tennis handicapper Jose Onorato is backing .

Onorato grew up playing competitive tennis in Caracas, Venezuela. After coming to the U.S., he trained with famed coach Nick Bollettieri at IMG Academy in Florida and faced players like Robert Farah, now one of the world's top-ranked doubles players.

Onorato, who holds dual degrees in finance and economics from the University of Miami, does extensive research before placing any tennis bets. He studies current form, players' tendencies on a particular surface, weather conditions and many other relevant factors. That systematic approach has helped Onorato go 168-106-8 (+107.12 units) since 2022. In the 2024 French Open, he correctly picked Iga Swiatek (-160) to win the women's title.

Now, Onorato has scrutinized the latest US Open 2024 odds and released his coveted best bets to win it all. He's sharing all of his picks and analysis at SportsLine .

Top 2024 US Open men's predictions

Onorato is fading Alcaraz, who is the favorite and has won the last two grand slams. The Spaniard lost to Djokovic in the gold medal match in Paris, and he struggled in his return to hard courts earlier this month. Alcaraz lost to Gael Monfils in three sets in Cincinnati, despite entering the match as a whopping -1400 favorite. 

There are several threats to knock Alcaraz out of the second quarter of the draw, including big servers Jack Draper and Hubert Hurkacz. If Alcaraz gets past both of them, he will likely have to beat Sinner and Djokovic to win the title. It is difficult to justify his price to win the tournament, as that projected draw will leave him as a slight favorite on several occasions.  See who else to back and fade here .

How to make 2024 US Open men's picks 

Onorato has a full preview with multiple best bets, including a play on a big longshot going off higher than 10-1. You can only see his US Open 2024 picks and analysis at SportsLine .

Who wins the US Open 2024, and which enormous longshots could take the crown? Visit SportsLine now to see Onorato's bets for the US Open 2024, all from the renowned tennis expert with several high-profile future wins , and find out.

2024 Men's US Open odds, top contenders

See full US Open 2024 men's picks, predictions and best bets here .

Carlos Alcaraz +210 Novak Djokovic +240 Jannik Sinner +320 Alexander Zverev +750 Daniil Medvedev +1900 Andrey Rublev +4900 Taylor Fritz +5000 Frances Tiafoe +5500 Stefanos Tsitsipas +6000 Holger Rune +6000 Ben Shelton +6500 Felix Auger Aliassime +9000 Matteo Berrettini +9000 Tommy Paul +9500 Casper Ruud +9500 Hubert Hurkacz +11000 Lorenzo Musetti +11000 Grigor Dimitrov +11000 Alex De Minaur +11000 Sebastian Korda +11000 Jack Draper +11000 Karen Khachanov +12000 Alexei Popyrin +12000

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