Virtually Awesome
Who knew the absence of a single mode could kill our Virtua Tennis 3 buzz?
Published: April 15, 2007
Because of the fact that VT's gameplay has been honed in such a way as to surgically inject its particular brand of crack directly into your vein not unlike a loaded syringe of awesome, even old hands at the game will find themselves hooked by the mix of mini-games and slow-but-steady progression of World Tour Mode. To keep things interesting, you'll get called out by actual pros to conduct practice matches, balance the constant need to attend the Tennis Academy and practice mini-games to boost stats with tournaments to push you higher up in the rankings, plus make sure that you get enough rest (or a sip of a magical sports drink or full-on vacation if you want to half-ass it or go whole-hog) all according to a basic schedule that you can check at any time.
Eventually I just dropped the schedule and started spamming the mini-games to level up my serves, footwork, ground strokes and volleys since they offer the best risk/reward setup in the game, but the late-game AI can be absolutely brutal, which is why you'll need to have some serious stat progression in place. Just as the games have always done, watching your character grow RPG-style, is part of all the fun, but if you can't ply those skil--okay, y'know what? No more bitching about the lack of online until the end, I promise.
Instead, I'll praise the fact that the game's arcade-like controls absolutely make the experience. Though it's never explained outright, the fact that you can control the type of hit, from crushes to ground strokes, to quick volleys to the largely pointless lob (useful only for players that rush the net) to drop shots by just pressing the X, Square and Triangle Buttons means it's easy to mix things up without having to worry about setting up for the shot. It should be noted that, yes, you can play the game entirely with the SIXAXIS, tilting left/right/up/down to move around and then swinging out for a normal shot, pulling back for a drop and moving left/right for slices. To be perfectly honest, the controls work, but they're little more than a gimmick.
Arguably the biggest change to the series is the move to 1080p, and SEGA handled the transition perfectly. The framerate is solid, textures are all hi-res right down to uniforms and court surfaces, and really the only thing that truly looks off is the player faces themselves. Most of the players are basic approximations, but something about the shadowing or number of polygons used for the faces or just the basic modeling make most of the players look like zombies.
If only the music were as impressive a jump. Rather than the first game's so-bad-they-rock wailing guitars or the second game's thumping 4/4 beats, the stuff in VF3 lacks any of the (perhaps misguided) enthusiasm of the previous games. Without cheese, the music is just plain boring. Luckily the effects, as minimalist as they are (shoe squeaks, grunts and the clop of the ball meeting racquet are really all you'll hear), at least make up for it partway. Though you'll see both male and female pro athletes, none of them actually donated voices, so don't expect the throwaway "comments" from any of the athletes to have anything accompanying them beyond a bunch of random hand gestures and mouth movements.
Here's the bottom line: the lack of online play sucks -- and I'm sure you're absolutely sick of hearing that by now but it's true. The core controls and gameplay haven't really suffered at all as the series has moved to hi-def, but then again they haven't improved at all either. As said at the very beginning, though, it's hard to improve on what more or less amounts to the perfect blend of arcade-perfect control with a home game's sense of character progression. It looks nice, sure, but the real draw here is what it always has been: pick-up-and-play accessibility. And that's as good as it's ever been. It's just a shame you have to pay $60 to experience it all over again without... well, you know by now.
