Virtua Tennis 3
Virtua Tennis 3 developed by Sega and released in 2007 is an above average tennis game, but it isn't the best next gen release in the genre. Virtua Tennis 3 features great graphics and presentation, but also has some repetitive gameplay and a grind heavy career mode.
The core gameplay to VT3 is very fluid and arcade like. The game is fun to play, but any tennis game will have an amount of simplicity to it. Virtua Tennis 3 is just essentially pong with upgraded visuals, and the same can be said about the core gameplay to any tennis game. The main draw to VT3 is no doubt the career mode. The goal of the career mode is to take a created player all the way from rank 300 to the number 1 ranking in the world. The create a player engine is pretty poor, and their are limited options when customizing the player. Along the way to the number 1 ranking mark new tournaments will open up at certain tiers of ranking. For example once you reach 200 the next level of tournaments will be available to play. The single player career is mostly singles tennis matches, but you can pair up with a computer AI companion and also tackle the doubles circuit. The career cycle is 1 week, and every week you will either be playing in a match or leveling up your character's stats through one of the many and pretty fun mini games. Each week only one action can be performed. Stay active for too many weeks, and your stamina bar will drain. When stamina is low it is advised to rest your character to prevent an injury. There are a good selections of tournaments in the career mode, but the game doesn't have ATP licensing so you wont see a tournament title the French Open or Wimbledon. There are also a ton of pro players to meet and battle against in the career such as the williams sisters, rafeal nadal, and rodger federer.
The main component to the career mode or World Tour, is the RPG esque player progression for your character's stats. Each practice match or participation in a mini game will level your characters stats in one of many categories. If you enter a tournament with lower stats than the game wants you to have, you will get crushed. Most of the time though you will be over leveled and end up crushing each opponent. I do not like that there really is no middle ground, and the career progression is just simply way to easy. Overall the career mode will be a grind to level up your character to be able to beat the tougher opponents, and it will take awhile to get to the number 1 ranking. I wish it was less of a grind and more of a challenge. Besides the career mode there is an exhibition mode, and a tournament mode. The tournament mode is just a series of 6 matches against opponents, and it is pretty much like an arcade mode. I have played through both the xbox360 version and the Ps3 version. The 360 version has online play but the ps3 didn't. Why the Ps3 didn't have online I have no clue. The online really isn't that great though, as mostly everybody i remembered facing always used their level 100 characters and smoked me.
Where Virtua Tennis shines is in its visuals and presentation. The graphics in the game look very good, even held to today's standards of 2012. The courts are all full of bright colors, and the player animations and detail are really fantastic. The menus in VT3 are very slick and easy to navigate. The way that the career is laid out is pretty good as well. The audio in VT3 is very generic. The menus sound good, but during matches there is no commentary and instead there is just generic sounding pop rock music. I was definitely disappointed in the audio design.
I remember picking VT3 up years ago for only a few $$, and it is definitely worth that. I have probably spent around 30 hours on each version of the game, and for a fan of previous Virtua Tennis games or a fan of the tennis genre the game is easily worth playing even though it isn't the best the genre has to offer cough Top Spin cough.
3.5 stars (7.0)
Gameplay: 6
Replayability/Value: 6
Graphics: 8
Audio: 6
Presentation/Design/Story: 8
