Pre-Review: Virtua Tennis 3 (360)

Geoff’s Take

I have fond memories of Virtua Tennis from my Dreamcast days - although never a huge tennis fan, I somehow bought the game and spent a surprising amount of time playing it with anyone who happened to be in the area. VT3 represents the latest entry into the popular series.

Sports games aren’t really the best platform for innovation: the rules don’t change very much and you don’t have much latitude for major edits. The most fruitful areas to focus on are generally improving the graphics and animation, creating a fun multi-player experience, and adding supplemental challenges. VT3 generally delivers in all of these areas.

With respect to the graphics, VT3 runs in 1080p, and is one of the few games to do so. As you might expect, the graphics are crisp and colorful; the one downside is that the plasticine nature of the human players is a bit more evident in a 1 on 1 game like tennis than it might be in something like Gears of War. That said, it’s an impressive accomplishment and the solid animations help to improve the experience further.

VT3 also retains the gameplay mechanics of its predecessor, which is a good thing. The Virtua Tennis series, as Gamespot has noted, has always had a slightly exaggerated take on the sport that helps to emphasize its key points while not bogging down overmuch in the details. The Live support and multiplayer mini-games help to extend the experience and mark a notable advantage over the PS3 version, whose online options are simply not as robust.

Of course, the game isn’t all that different in its core play than its Dreamcast ancestor. There’s just so much that you can do with tennis as a sport, despite the continued polish that the developers have managed to add to it. Additionally, the graphics are just a little worse than the PS3 version; not a huge disadvantage, but something that I think will weigh on reviewers’ minds. Ultimately, I think VT3 will end up just this side of the 9.0 mark, landing at an 8.9.

Jeff’s Take:

While this may be one of the best Tennis simulations, the game will probably suffer from the same problem that Rockstar’s Table Tennis had: depth.  Like Table Tennis, this game does what it does very very well: play Tennis.  The addition of a few mini-games and the slightly slower than Ping-Pong pace of the game allow for a bit more control, adding a bit to it’s overall value.

The graphics also are quite good, although sometimes look a bit too “shiny”.  At times, the characters faces and eyes look slightly spacey, and you’ll also wonder whether people’s necks actually look the way they do in the game.

All in all, it’ll be a solid game worth picking up for the tennis fan, or someone looking for a pretty fun multiplayer game.  It will probably garner an 8.6.