Virtua Tennis 3 for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

After a long drought in which SEGA's original tennis game went missing, the Japanese publisher dug into its sports library to revive its great tennis series with an Xbox 360 version of Virtua Tennis 3. The original arcade game, which gave rise to a sequel and numerous other interpretations and competitor rip-offs, remains a solid, deep, and enjoyable game, even if it's not terribly inspired.



SEGA's development strategy for Virtua Tennis 3 features Sumo Digital on the Xbox 360, while internal studio AM2 has its hands on the PS3 and PSP versions. There appears to be at least one good reason for this. The Xbox 360 version has a respectable online mode, which supports singles and doubles matches across four consoles, voice chat, a spectator mode called VT.TV, Achievements and leaderboards. The PS3 version doesn't support online features at all. Aside from that, the differences aren't too significant. This online edge is important, especially since Xbox 360 owners have come to expect online functionality in all their games. But the real question you should ask yourself is this: What do you want from your next tennis game? More mini-games? A deeper single-player experience? Better graphics? More innovation?



From the Top

Virtua Tennis 3 is a solid, enhanced iteration that plays a lot like the previous version (Virtua Tennis 2 on Dreamcast and SEGA Sports Tennis). First, it looks better. VT3 offers 1080p support, more realistic characters, better motion capture and animations. And it plays better. VT3 is slightly superior to its predecessor because it's better-rounded, a little deeper, and provides more gameplay modes and options. It sports a more thorough single-player career, including a decent create-a-player feature, and it offers a respectable online mode that enables your built-up, created character to vie online.



It will not, however, usher in the next generation of tennis. It's nether terribly original, nor is it innovative in any way. SEGA hasn't added any significant feature sets to give this a true next-generation feel other than online support, whether we're talking about the controls, mini-games, or the basic career mode progression. Don't get me wrong, Virtua Tennis 3 is a solid, fun tennis game -- the best of its kind -- but it could use some fresh ideas and lacks that creative spark to give it real life in this generation.



The Xbox 360 version offers five modes of play: World Tour (Career mode), Tournament (compete in four Grand Slam events), Exhibition (a singles or doubles match with one to four players), Court Games (play mini-games against other players), or Xbox Live (ranked or unranked matches with two to four players, including VT.TV and leaderboards). While World Tour is the game's meat and potatoes (which I'll get to in a second), SEGA was smart to support Xbox Live and also to branch out the mini-games in Court Games.



You can pick from 20 professional players including Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova, as well as Rafael Nadal, David Nalbandian, Sebastien Grosjean, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Tim Henman, James Blake, Mario Ancic, Taylor Dent, Gael Monfils, Tommy Haas, Lindsay Davenport, Daniela Hantuchova, Martina Hingis, Nicole Vaidisova, Amelie Mauresmo and Venus Williams. Each athlete is also described with a terse sentence such as big server, "fastest serve in the game"; all rounder, "precise shots make him the best"; and hard hitter, "complete attacking game." Each descriptor offers enough detail to help players pick the style of athlete they'd like to play as, which is helpful when confronted with a tougher opponent.



You won't play as Serena Williams (apparently one Williams sister is enough for one game), and you won't play as legacy stars either. You couldn't play as a legacy player in any other SEGA tennis games, but playing as Jimmy Connor, Andre Agassi, or Steffi Graf, for instance, would add another whole level of enjoyment to the series.



Live Support

Aside from Exhibition, which enables players easy access to a simple singles or doubles game, Court Games' mini-games provide that quick, arcade feeling so gamers can jump in, compete against each other in crazy little games such as Court Curling, Alien Attack, Super Bingo, or Pin Crusher, and get out again. These games are just plain stupid fun and their two-player functionality is a big plus. The Xbox Live support offers the same essential ease and delight. Click on the Xbox Live menu, decide whether you want to play in Ranked or Unranked matches, singles or double matches, set up your own custom game, and play. Smartly, SEGA enables four independent players to vie on Xbox Live (instead of forcing two players to double up on one unit), and it permits your created player to suit up online too.



Technically, VT3's online modes does a good job of quickly connecting players and giving them a relatively lag-free session whether they're playing singles or doubles. Online, you can play against anyone else across the world and because of the nature of tennis, getting four players into one lobby is pretty quick. Of course, doubles with another human player is an intense, coordinated effort that requires you to pay as much attention to your partner's behavior as to your opponent's. My online experience was virtually lag-free until the end of our session, when lag raised its ugly head and made interpreting the opponent's next move difficult, if not impossible. Like all online games, lag depends on the connections each player has with the service, so lag in general is bound to happen.



The lobby is a visual affair; you pick a pro or import your laboriously-created athlete, and place them on a virtual court with the person with whom you want to play. After the game, the lobby is a little less friendly, pushing you into a rather vague place in which you're not sure where to go next. There is some slowdown with the online doubles game, but it's not much worse than the single-player game's slowdown that takes place when any doubles player misses the ball.



From a pure gameplay standpoint, VT3's online mode is not only a key component, but playing online provides an excellent feeling. While Top Spin 2 offered online support, it just didn't match the caliber as the original Top Spin. Here, the online play is fun with single opponents, but it's particularly fun to play in doubles tournaments. You can talk all the smack you want, and you're very likely to do so, but the dynamic play of doubles puts players into a cooperative state of play that's intense, competitive, and reliant on supporting your team mate. The visuals and sound stand up solidly online, too.



World Tour

World Tour, or Career mode, digs down deep into the game's role-playing element. Essentially, Career consists of creating a player, building aspects of his or her game (serves, volley, groundstroke, footwork, and technical practice), and playing tournaments. What VT3 does better than its predecessor is to infuse more variety into the mix. In VT2, the career mode was fun, but also limited and repetitive. You played mini-games and tournaments. Now, there are 10 new mini-games and two classic ones, a Tennis Academy, practice sessions with pros that pop up randomly on the calendar, and a stamina meter. The stamina meter requires players to constantly check their health or they'll get injured and be forced to sit out several weeks before returning to play. Naturally, you have a coach who provides general information, occasionally sends you free gear, and, if you're having a tough time beating a certain mini-game or pro player, he will provide useful, concrete tips.



The World Tour mode requires you pick a female or male pro career, and gives the option to pick a home country, a coach, some email to start things off, the Academy, and a few mini-games. Players start out as a total nobody, ranked 300th in the world, who must improve their skills until reaching the number-one ranking. As players progress, they'll open up new mini-games and tournaments, and as their skill increases, they'll meet pro players, earn new gear (including clothes, sunglasses, rackets, wristbands, and), and grow older. Nothing actually affects play except increasingly better rackets. The create-a-player tool is a decent instrument, but you'll always create one of two types of player: 1) an ordinary looking one, or 2) a downright ugly one. In reality, it's far more fun to create the ugliest player in the world than the prettiest one. But SEGA keeps the tool in check, so players can't create the monstrosities they could in Top Spin 2.



Meeting the pros essentially consists of a nearly static custcene in which a robotic pro, like say, Roger Federer, says something like, "Hey, I've watched you on the courts. You're good. Want to practice together?" The text shows on screen as the player uses about 1,000 mouth movements over about 15 seconds for what should be a five-second sentence. In other words, characters' mouths move far too long to utter the short amount of words they're given. The cutscenes don't actually do anything either, except that they tally up to give an Achievement once all of the pros have been met. These little segments have the potential to offer potentially deeper RPG aspects, like creating rivalries or friendships with other players that could play out during the World Tour's progression, but sadly, they don't.



As for the basic structure of the World Tour mode, it's essentially the same as Virtua Tennis 2, only built out with more variety and little management elements. You can practice against lots of people now, not just enter into mini-games. By playing others in practice sessions, you'll learn their styles of play on various court surfaces, and you'll upgrade stats (but not ranking) after each session. The mini-games are deeper, too. As players progress, they will constantly see the mini-games increasing in difficulty, so players will see level 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, in each game.



The new stamina meter is simplistic, but it keeps things sort or real. If you drain stamina below 50%, injuries such as strained wrists, knees and elbows, will occur. You'll miss weeks of play time and potentially big tournaments. So after each game or tournament you'll want to keep an eye on it and rest by choosing to imbibe an energy drink, chill at home for a week, or take a three-week vacation on a tropical island. Each one revives energy, though the energy drink is a short-term solution that doesn't prevent injuries, it just postpones them. You'll eventually realize that your life-span as a pro is quite long, so missing a few weeks here and there doesn't mean jack.



This time around the World Tour mode is better paced than the last game. You'll start off a little quicker, opening up all sorts of mini-games right away. And, even if your stats stink for a season or even two, the variety of stuff to do is so great you'll nonetheless get lost in them. And that's the point, right, getting lost in the game? VT3 starts off quickly, slows down for a while, and then, at least in my season, the pace picked up as I passed the 204th and the 100th ranks, each one signifying a new level of more competitive tournaments. The game finally grows challenging once you've attained a ranking of 100. Up until then I was able to breeze past nearly every competitor shut-out games and 3-0 games matches. But finally, the game kicks into gear around that 100th ranking. You'll see players like Henman work his drop shots, Roddick use his powerful serves to push you all over the court, and Juan Carlos Ferrero blast the crap out of every single shot. Surprisingly, my most feared competitor, Federer, wasn't ever a challenge, which is the very opposite of real life, where he is dominant on all but clay courts.



The game offers a decent spread of Achievements that regularly offer 10 points here and 20 points there, such as simply creating a player, talking to all pro players, reaching the 200th ranking, running for approximately 10 kilometers, and playing and beat all female and male athletes, to name a few. You'll also breathe a sigh of relief as the game camera is set in a fixed position, meaning it will always stay behind you as opposed to switching to the opposite side of the court. Of course, you have the option to change that, too.



Sound and Graphics

Graphically, Virtua Tennis 3 hits some high notes. The character models are realistic in most cases: Roger Federer and Venus Williams look great, for instance, while everyone's favorite tennis sex symbol, Maria Sharapova, leaves a lot to be desired. The animations -- like swishing cloth textures and hair -- are excellent, and you'll really enjoy the new spin, reach, and dive animations. The grass and clay courts wear down over time, too, showing spots where players planted a perfectly placed corner shot. The crowds generally look good, with a variety of different attendees animating in different ways, and the courts are pretty good looking, too.



The game looks solid in 1080p. If you have a TV to show off this resolution, you're sort of in luck. My review build showed off some pretty ugly texture seams in players' heads, on the courts, and in cutscenes. Overall, the texture work isn't stunning. You'll see the textures are very basic, and the resolution doesn't enhance tremendous graphic design. The visuals appear more like high-res versions of the current generation version than true next-gen graphics.



The sound effects also leave a little to be desired. Thankfully, SEGA cut out most of the female pro player shrieks that have grown phenomenally horrible to listen to in real tennis, though Sharapova yelps out a funny one every so often. It doesn't quite sound like a shriek of pain or success, but rather like a confused morning dove, lost in a fierce wind, hit by a BB gun pellet. Not sure what SEGA was going for there. The music is pretty sub-standard, too, but par for the series. It's essentially cut from the same mold as the original game, giving players generic guitar riffs in forgettable rock themes. You'll eventually want to just turn the music off. It's what coin-op developers call attract mode music, although I'm not really sure who it's attracting.

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