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Virtua Tennis 3

In March of this year, Sega updated their Virtua Tennis franchise for the next generation console systems, and while doing so, also ported the third Virtua Tennis title to the PC. Now it's clear that PS3 and Xbox 360 are the primary platforms for the game, but what do we get on the PC? Another half-baked quick hack console port or something better?

The Virtua Tennis series has a distinguished history from its humble beginnings on the Dreamcast and in the arcades (on the Dreamcast-based NAOMI system), but it's too bad that the third incarnation of Virtua Tennis boasts a feature list offering almost nothing new. One could say it's nothing more than a graphics upgrade to a six-year old Dreamcast game.

Well, its a game where you play tennis

Virtua Tennis 3 offers several gameplay modes. You can play a single exhibition match, a tournament, some court games or the main part, the World Tour. Single matches and tournaments are pretty self-explanatory - you pick a pro player character and play either a match or a tournament, and you can play with up to four human players assuming you have enough gamepads. Court games let you play many of the mini-games of the world tour mode with your friends.

Single matches play pretty well: the only real problem I noticed was that as soon as you bump up the difficulty level, Virtua Tennis 3 turns into a diving game. To make a shot, you press one of the three shot buttons - the longer you hold the button before the ball comes to your range, harder your return is. However, if you have to run across the court to reach the ball while holding a shot button, the game takes the first available shot in range - which is a diving shot. You can hold off hitting the shot button until the last moment to avoid this, but that means your return is a very weak shot.

In earlier Virtua Tennis games you had to release the shot button to actually take your shot, so you could either take that diving shot from range, or run a bit closer for a more normal high-powered shot, with the added risk of missing the ball if you waited too long. While the shot system of Virtua Tennis 3 is more newbie-friendly, it also makes games against human players at higher skill levels a bit silly as both players constantly dive across the court to reach cross-court balls while trying to get strong returns.

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