Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2 Ps2 !EXCLUSIVE! Download Iso
Violetta Hooke
The game features many playable modes including Arcade mode and the in depth Pro tour mode in which you create a player and try to become a tennis champion. Other modes include Exhibition, Challenge and Tutorial. There are a range of courts one can play on, including those at the Australian Open (the old Rebound Ace courts), Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Along with various tennis characters, players can unlock characters from the Soulcalibur series (Cassandra Alexandra and Raphael Sorel) and Tekken series (Heihachi Mishima and Ling Xiaoyu).
Like its predecessor, Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2 is a straightforward tennis game that takes the game pretty seriously. You won't see primary-colored mascots, supercombo shots, or crazy court locales. Instead you'll have a roster of 16 real-life pros to choose from, which represents double the number of pros in the first Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament. This roster includes the most prominent players in the game right now, including Andy Roddick, Tim Henman, Lleyton Hewitt, Serena Williams, Justine Henin-Hardenne, and Kim Clijsters. The game also boasts more than 10 different courts, including the four tournament locations that constitute the Grand Slam Tournament series--the Australian Open, Roland Garros (aka the French Open), Wimbledon, and the US Open.
These are the stars and the courts that you'll be spending your time with and on, respectively, in the arcade and exhibition modes. The arcade mode puts you through a series of three to five tournaments against some challenging artificially intelligent opponents, while the exhibition mode grants more customization options, letting one to four players choose the pros they'll play as and against as well as the courts they'll play on. Players also get to determine whether they'll play singles or doubles exhibition matches.
The pro tour mode takes the spotlight off the established stars and lets you create your own rising star in the world of tennis. Most of the physical customization options here are pretty by-the-book, though the fact that you're asked to choose from a short list of animations for both serving and receiving stances caught our eye as nice touches. Statistic customizations seem even more comprehensive, since your pro's abilities are broken into five specific categories, some of which are then broken into several subcategories. Once you've defined your character, you'll start playing through a week-by-week season of tennis, which includes plenty of tournaments and lots and lots of training exercises--especially at the beginning, when your world ranking isn't high enough to qualify for most of the tournaments. Successfully completing training exercises and winning tournaments will net you experience points, which you can use to increase any of your pro's discrete stat fields. It takes a little while to really build up some momentum in the pro tour mode, so you'll have to spend awhile slogging through the same three training exercises over and over again until your pro is capable enough to start winning tournaments, gain ranks, and qualify for a wider range of tournaments. As you progress, you'll also earn points that can be used in the game's pro shop, where you can purchase a variety of gear that serves aesthetic and performance-enhancing purposes.
One of the more interesting things about the pro tour mode is the way that tournaments are handled by default. Rather than have you play the eight or more matches you'd need to win a tournament, the game simulates the majority of the action, and you only play a handful of decisive games, which come with extra mission objectives, such as serving aces, serving the ball right on the service line, or executing a certain percentage of high-quality shots. This option definitely speeds up the tournaments, which have classically had a tendency to become rather monotonous. For the players who would prefer a greater level of personal control over these tournaments, an option exists that lets you play all the games yourself. There are some other nice, little touches, like the occasional piece of fan mail you'll receive or an invite to a special tournament, but the fundamentals of the pro tour are all pretty familiar, and the mode doesn't have quite the depth we've seen in the career modes in other modern tennis games.
It's been almost two years since there's been a tennis game worth mentioning for the PlayStation 2, and so, without pushing terribly hard, Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2 comes away as the best-looking tennis game to grace the platform. The character models feature some great texture details, and they animate quite naturally, though you'll notice certain transitions can be a little rough. Furthermore, there are some nice, subtle variations between the animations for the different players. The court surfaces look quite real and will show some subtle wear over the course of a match. The lighting system that's in place isn't particularly complex, but the shadows cast by the players and the ball look clean and sharp, which really pretty well describes the game's overall look. There are some points of the presentation that would have benefitted from a little more polish, such as the area just outside the court. You never get much of a sense of the size of the arenas, and whenever the camera cuts to the crowd in between rounds, you'll notice some really ugly and poorly animated 2D sprites filling the bleachers. The game is also pretty light on the flashy special effects, opting instead for a true-to-life presentation, which can either come across as dry or authentic depending largely on how realistic you like your tennis games.
So there you are. Englishman almost had a great day at the courts, but lost badly and eventually did the only sensible thing by smashing his racket to smithereens and retiring for 10 pints of Stella and a quick lobstering in the beer garden. Same as every year.
31-Mar-2019
Action Shots from the Georgia Bowl
Last weekend, the 52-court tennis center in Rome, Ga., was home to theGeorgia Bowl - a USTA National Level 3 Tournament. Great springweather cooperated until the last day when some of the finals had tobe cancelled due to rain. Benjamin Koch took home the Boys' 18 singlestitle, while Jenna Thompson and Ava Hrastar were not able to get theirGirls' 18s singles title match in. Photographer Bill Kallenberg was onsite to get some great photos.