Virtua Tennis 3 Preview

January 19th, 2007, 20:31 Posted By: wraggster

via ign

Look, we're not going to lie to you. Virtua Tennis 3 plays an awful lot like previous Virtua Tennis games. This isn't a title that reinvents the wheel. It doesn't swap racquets out in favour of blazing tennis guitars (*note to self: patent tennis guitars*), transforming rallies into duelling solos. Nor does it shift the setting to aboard a space zeppelin, where the tennis rock operas of the future are sure to be played out, instead opting for more humble Earthly locations such as New York and Melbourne. No, the Virtua Tennis 3 story is much like the one by Charles Darwin; a tale of evolution. It may not be a brand new game - far from it in fact, but with each iteration Sega come closer and closer to tennis perfection.

The meat of the game lies, once again, in the World Tour mode, so we'll give you the guided tour. Player creation options aren't staggeringly complex, but you'll certainly be able to put together a freakish looking creation… should that be your goal. Which, if you're anything like us, it probably will be. Basic options include choosing height and weight, then selecting skin tone, eye colour, hair, hair colour, eyebrows, eyebrow colour, beard and beard colour. Perhaps the option that gives you the most power is the face shape tool, breaking your player's face into three categories - eye shape, nose shape and mouth shape. Each can be adjusted using the right analogue stick. You'll have your half man, half puffer fish up and playing in no time. Once you're happy with your player's look, there are a few other decisions to be made, most importantly whether you're left or right handed, and which animations you'd like for serving, receiving and hitting the ball. Pretty standard stuff really.

With that out of the way, you're whisked off to the globe hub map to choose the location of your secret lair. Sorry, home base. From here you can access your mail (gee, thanks for giving me a wristband for winning my first tournament, Coach!) and the calendar, where you can check out a week by week breakdown of the tournaments you may want to play in. As you'd expect, the World Tour mode kicks off with your player ranked 300 in the world, with no stats to speak of. Fortunately, there are a whole host of training mini-games to take part in, each designed to hone your skills in a particular area. Several of these return from previous games, while others are fresh off the designer's notepad. Each training session takes up a week, as does resting - which you'll need to do from time to time when your stamina levels get low enough.

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