Yep. Automatic must-buy. It sounds like there really isn't anything EA has missed with this one. I've bolded the most delicious morsels.
http://wii.ign.com/articles/962/962284p1.html
March 12, 2009 - I recently had the chance to play Grand Slam Tennis for Wii and I thought it was really fun. The only problem? Publisher EA demoed the title to me minus the MotionPlus peripheral and as a result I could not test out what is the single biggest and most coveted feature of the experience. Thankfully, I got to rectify that oversight this week at the company's Season Opener event in San Francisco, where a Wii MotionPlus-ready build of Grand Slam Tennis was on display and fully playable. And play it I did. So what's the verdict? Well, frankly, it's incredible, which makes EA two for two now because Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 equipped with MotionPlus is spectacular, too.
Before I jumped into Grand Slam Tennis with MotionPlus, I tried playing once more without it. I simply selected practice mode, started a rally and off I went, strafing back and forth while hitting tennis balls over the net time and time again. Although you can plug a nunchuk in and control your character with analog precision, EA has always demoed the title in its more accessible Wii remote-only configuration in which character movement is automatic; all you have to do is swing away. The setup works very well, of course.
Once you plug in the Wii MotionPlus dongle, the title auto-recognizes it and takes advantage of its added precision. Simple, no fuss. And all of a sudden you play Grand Slam Tennis very differently. Rallies become much less about timing and much more about the motion and positioning of your swing. The experience considerably more natural and intuitive than any tennis videogame I have ever played, Wii Sports included. And you'll notice this added control fidelity the moment you start playing. If you bend down with the controller in hand, your athletic superstar will do the same, positioning his racket in a lower formation. If you raise the controller above your head, so will he. If you hold it at mid-level, he will too. And you can play the match in these formations.
Forehands and backhands are legitimately read and translated, occasionally at your expense. If you anticipate shots and prepare a forehand or backhand correctly, you'll be golden, and your rallies will be intense and long. But if you misread a shot, go for a forehand and then correct to a backhand, your character will try to do the same, which takes a second, and you might actually flub the shot because of it. You don't have to do that, though, because you can play the way you want to. If you find, for example, that you just don't like your backhands, you can attack left-corner court returns with forehand swings. You simply position the Wii remote sideways as though you want to hit a forehand return and your character will go into the position and strafe over so that you can hit the ball. Works flawlessly and feels very dynamic.
Without Wii MotionPlus, rallies are all about timing. Based on when you swing, the ball will fly off in a certain direction -- very similar to Wii Sports Tennis. With MotionPlus, it's all about your form, power and followthrough, the latter of which is very important. You still use A and B-trigger as lob and dropshot modifiers, which just works. But less emphasis is placed on your timing. As your waiting for a serve or for a return, you twist the Wii remote about and your on-screen character will do the same. And when you finally hit it back, you'll need to consider whether to hit forehand or backhand, speed, and the positioning of the Wii remote at the end of your motion and arch. In my play test, every ball I returned shot exactly where I wanted it to go. Even better, if I cut my followthrough midway on a return, the ball would curve inward toward the middle court instead of outward toward a corner, which is amazing.
I can't wait to play a lot more of the game, but even now two truths are rapidly becoming evident. First, EA Grand Slam Tennis is better than Wii Sports Tennis even without MotionPlus support. But with it, the game is in another league entirely. Look out for more coverage of the extremely promising sports game soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out a new trailer in our media section.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
. Despite their choice to make Wii's Dead Space on-rails, I think EA is my favourite third party right now.
