irtua Tennis was a huge hit on the Dreamcast, as well as in the arcades. Now with Virtua Tennis: World Tour everyone can play tennis on the go. We take this baby around the globe by its shorty shorts to see if it serves up some fun or trips on its own laces.
Right off the bat you can tell World Tour was custom built for portability. If you’ve only got a short five minutes while you’re waiting for the bus or something, select Quick Match. In this attempt to get you on the court as fast as possible, the computer will pick the players and location. You don’t have to think about anything! Add this feature in with the easily accessible Ball Games and you’ve got yourself a fast dose of gaming goodness.
Ball Games are basically wacky minigames that add a nice taste of variety to the straightforward tennis gameplay. Balloon Smash will have you smacking balls off of different giant floating balloons. The more you hit in a row the bigger your points multiplier will be. You can also earn time extensions to keep the points rolling in. Blockbuster is essentially you versus Tetris. Your character smacks the ball off a colorful wall of blocks, and every time you clear them out more will fall into place. If you use some strategy you can get certain colors to cluster together and take it down for a big bonus. Fruit Dash has your character chasing after jumbo sized cartoon fruit while mechanized ball launchers try to peg you. This mode is probably the least satisfying since you’re just kind of running around and not actually smacking the ball. But Blocker puts things right back on track with a kind of reversed Blockbuster scenario. Steadily multiplying ball launchers send over a barrage which you must prevent from striking the wall behind you. Blocks will change from green to yellow to red to nothing, and once the blocks are all out the game is over.
If you’ve got a little more time on your hands go for the Exhibition and Tournament modes. Exhibition is your basic one-shot match, but you get to choose your character and opponent, singles or doubles play, type of court, difficulty, etc. In Tournament mode you’ll work you’re way through three to five rounds before competing in the finals. Each match obviously ratchets up the difficulty, but I felt this could have been done a little more gradually. The first couple challengers feel like you’re playing against a tree stump and then the next guy is like facing a brick wall that won’t let anything past.
For the tennis hounds out there looking for a little depth, Sega has included the World Tour mode. Start out this mode by waiting through a lengthy loading screen while the game tries to queue up your character. Select from a few faces, hair styles, skin tones, and outfits and you’ll be on your way. Next, pick a home base anywhere on the planet (including the ocean! Undersea tennis fortress here we come!) and travel around to earn money and rank points. Use the cash from your winnings to buy new clothes, rackets, playable courts – even people! Rather, you can pay off other pros to be your doubles partner for a set period of time. Which pros? How about striking studs like Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, or Tommy Haas? Maybe ladies like Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams (sorry, no Serena), or Sarah Bailey are more your style. These players and more are also playable in all of the other modes.
But you can’t just show up at a tournament and expect to play. No one knows who the heck you are so it’ll take some heavy training to build up your rank and skills enough to compete with the big dogs and eventually become champion of the world. With special training minigames you’ll be able to level up your serve, volley, stroke, and footwork skills. In Prize Sniper you serve a ball towards a circular conveyor belt to try to knock chintzy crap off of it for points. Pin Crasher has you serving towards giant bowling pins. Take out a squad of ball launchers in Alien Force by whacking their balls back at them. Aim for the center of a giant target in Bullseye. Collect as many flags as you can without getting dinged by a tennis ball in Danger Flags. Walk over as many little cans as possible while keeping a volley going in Stomper. Face off against a mean old tank and its wimpy sidekick in Tank Attack. And try to flip over plenty of discs on the other side of the court from black to white in Disc Shooter. There’s some kind of senseless Stamina meter that depletes every time you participate in an event, which basically forces you to go back and rest at your home base every eight turns or so. I guess Sega wants to be more like our mom and try to get us to visit home more often… or at least give a simple phone call!
The tennis gameplay takes a little time to get the hang of, but the collision detection is great and you never really feel like you’re ripped off because of a bug in the game. All you have to do is make sure your player gets to where the ball is and then tap the X button. Hit O or square for a respective slice or lob shot. Pull off an overhead slam by positioning yourself directly underneath a lobbed ball. Basically, it feels just like the Dreamcast version. You’ll notice the smooth animation as your character runs, lobs, smacks, and dives for the ball. During the zoomed out regular match view the character models and actions look startlingly realistic, but when we see them close up during replays things can get ugly.
Your proximity and timing of the hits will determine what style of stroke your character will perform throughout the match. Sometimes I found it difficult to predict what kind of hit I was going to make. Other times it felt like I had mastered the direction of the ball – making my opponent scamper all across the court. But my player would frequently just pop it up nice and easy for the computer to swat down. Perhaps it just takes a while to get the feel down.
Doubles play is pretty hit or miss. Against the easy teams you can just let your partner run around and do all of the work, but once the going gets tough they completely poop out. This was so much so that I found myself shouting at the PSP, “C’mon, Maria!! That was your ball!”
In fact, most of Virtua Tennis: World Tour will get you riled up this way. You’ll be thrusting your fist in the air for every victory and manically cursing every loss. For this reason alone I don’t recommend you play Virtua Tennis around small children. In fact, the ESRB should bump the rating up from an “E” simply for the inevitable four letter words that it brings forth. But if you’re an old school Virtua Tennis fan or a sports nut, this game aims a swift backhand straight for your heart.