Customer Reviews

Virtua Tennis 2009 (PC DVDROM)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Originally when I played this game, I really felt that the game was great. After playing it for a rather prolonged period of time, I find the need to update my review. I rate this game with three stars for fun and three overall. Amazon will not let me change it.

The graphic design and visuals in this game are just terrific. The game, first of all, is error-free. No graphic glitches whatsoever, and the court graphics are also awesome. For that, you have to hand it to Virtua Tennis. They have done a great job. But, I have to now revise my review by saying that this is the only thing that is good about the game. I originally compared this game to Top Spin 2 and felt this was better. I was wrong. Granted, Top Spin 2 was a major mess. But this is by no means superior. Examples of that were previously missed by me. And it is not easy to spot unless you look closely. So, Sega was being sneaky here. All the rule errors found in Top Spin 2 and more are in this game.

The number 1 and number 2 players are not in the same draw... or so I thought! If you play this game long enough, you will realize that they can be in the same draw. It does happen, although not as often as in Top Spin 2. That is why it is not easy to spot. The other thing that makes it hard for the user to spot the errors include the extremely long and boring season. You are just in a rush to get to the number one spot, that there is a tendency to just "get it over with." I mean the matches of course. If that is not bad enough, playing doubles makes a player's singles ranking rise. This is an atrocious rule error. Doubles and Singles rankings are separate in the real world. They have nothing to do with each other.

I must submit that this game has more problems than Top Spin 2. The long career mentioned above is the really annoying part of the game. It takes way too long before you make your player get to the number 1 spot. Sometimes it is easy to lose patience to do that. Sega must have thought about this. If a better tennis game comes out, or at least one as good as Virtua Tennis but with a far shorter career mode, people are going to ditch Virtua in an instant. It is so tiring to keep on playing this game till you take your player to the number one spot.

The amateur tour was totally unnecessary and unrealistic. That is not the way it works in the real world. Furthermore, the ranking goes up way too slowly in this. That is unrealistic. If you have been following professional tennis recently, you would know that just losing two grand slams cost Federer his number one spot and made Nadal number one. And just one grand slam final and one grand slam win brought Novak Djokovic to the number one spot. This game does not reflect that. Top Spin wins here by a large margin. They reflected this very well.

With that being said, I have to differ with the reviews contained the playstation version of this game, which state that two games in a match is a poor reflection of the game. Let us think about that for a second. First of all, you need to go through two-to-three seasons of the amateur tour and three-to-four more seasons of the pro-tour to become number one. If Sega also made you play an entire set and two-three sets per match, you will be 70 years old before you become number 1 in the game (considering you are 20 now). So, is that what you really want to do? Especially when the ranking goes up so slowly? I don't think two games per set and one set per match is a problem. I welcome it considering the unusually long career built for the player.

But the graphics are breathtaking, rules are greatly reflected and the game is near perfect. They could have prevented players from wearing colors at Wimbledon. But, that is the least of this game's problems. A lot of players look alike, so the player creation tool was poorly made. Top Spin wins here as well. That part is also disappointing.

The idea of unlocking secret players named "Duke" and "King" made me wonder what the hell the makers of the game were smoking when they were planning this game. However, the game does let you unlock Stefan Edberg, Tim Henman, and Boris Becker later on in the game. Could have had the player unlock Monica Seles and Martina Navratilova as further rewards as opposed to "Duke" and "King." I mean seriously, what was going through their heads? The practice matches in the games has huge crowds. Who goes and watches a practice match between two players? You got it. No one. So that was another unrealistic thing right there.

But nothing is really as bad as what you are about to hear. Try playing Mixed doubles in the game. If you chose the male player to be the first server in an exhibition match or tournament, the female player that teams up with the male player does all the "attitude" maneuvers that is associated with male players in the game. If you chose the female player as the first server, the male player does the "attitude" maneuvers associated with female players. What I mean by attitude maneuvers, to put in simple terms, is just behavior. What I mean is that the woman behaves like a man according to the game in the former case, and the man behaves like a woman in the latter case. If this is not an error, I don't know what the hell is. How could Sega have missed this? This is shameful.

All this made me reconsider my earlier rating for the game. 4 stars overall for the game is overrating it. Tennis Masters Series got only 4 stars from me. This is not getting more than three merely because of the presence of grand slam events. The thing that really killed this game is the extremely long, tiring and rather boring career system and slow movement of rankings. That really does need me to take another star away from fun - 3 for fun; 3 overall. With all these said, and considering Top Spin 2's own errors, I rate this game as being on par with Top Spin 2. In other words, neither is better than the other.

On a finishing note, Virtua Tennis 4 is here. Think very carefully before buying that game. A lot of people have also complained that Virtua Tennis 2009 is almost exactly the same as Virtua Tennis 3. So, is Virtua Tennis 4 only marginally different from Virtua Tennis 2009? Ask yourself that and try playing a demo of it if possible before buying it.