It's rather hard to discuss modern tennis video games without bringing up Sega's genre-defining Virtua Tennis. The original Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament took nearly all of its cues from Virtua Tennis, and though that influence is still apparent in Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2, the series has started to develop an identity of its own, most noticeably in regard to its core gameplay. This is a more focused, precision-based tennis game than any of the Sega-published tennis games ever were, so PlayStation 2 owners who have just grown weary of Sega Sports Tennis--and are up for the challenge--should find plenty to like about Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2.

For PlayStation 2 owners, this is the first good game of tennis to come along in years.

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 has all of the pieces you'd expect, though it's a little slow to start.

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.