Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360 - Trailer (2007)

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Average rating: 67%

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Certificate:
Developers:	SUMO DIGITAL
Format:	Xbox 360
Number of players:	1-4
Released:	30/03/2007
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Brief synopsis of Virtua Tennis 3

Virtua Tennis 3 isn't just tennis, but multi-tennis, with 12 mini-games for you to hone your skills, have fun or exert your Federer-like dominance over the competition.

These involve things like knocking down ninepins with well-directed serves; volleying balls into the middle of targets; playing bingo with numbers that move across the screen above the net; and keeping encroaching Space Invaders away from the net by knocking them down with volleys and smashes. Work your way through the mini-games and your player's attributes improve. There's also a Tennis Academy for more normal training, which sets you some seriously tricky tasks.

Add to this the improved AI over previous versions, the chance to play online (Xbox Live) and the true to life player visuals, and Virtua Tennis moves on apace from any of its previous incarnations.

Virtua Tennis 3 majors on customisation, from players (create your own to take on all-comers) right up to constructing your own tournaments. This is complemented by the use not only of real player images (and names) but also by the matching of their actual skills and preferences (grass, clay, long game, net-play) to their virtual characters. The depth of the AI, game-play and customisation is matched by the next-gen graphics and audio, both of which reflect the arenas, practice areas and camera angles that bring the video game Virtua variety of tennis close to the real thing.

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Members' Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

Virtua Tennis 3

A customer from Scotland , 28/03/2008

I always liked playing tennis games since they are generally frantic and fun to play. Virtua tennis is no different, with its simple and solid control system most people can pick up the game fairly quickly. It has a number of modes to play such as exhibition, tournament and career mode, as well as the X-box live matches. Career mode lets you create your own player and features bizzare mini games which will let you build up your skill as well as the skill of your player. Be warned though, when you play career mode the game gets very hard very quickly and you can find yourself be hammered by very clever computer opponents. However after a while you will master it if you persevere and wonder why you found it so difficult.

The graphics and sound were a dissapointment, to me at least. Although the presentation is crisp and clean, and the players mostly look like their real life counterparts, it is lacking in detail and the amination can seem robotic. Overall, Virtua Tennis 3 is a fun game with controls which are easy to pick up but difficult to master.

7 out of 7 people found this review helpful

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Train up!

A customer from England , 30/09/2007

With great anticipation, did I await this, the latest in a truly inspirational series. It seemed to have been the longest time since Virtua Tennis 2 was bringing a smile to my face on the Dreamcast console.

Virtua Tennis 3 was something I avoided because of the playable demo on X-Box Live. I found the demo too hard by far, and didn't seem to manage to strike the ball the way the CPU did. That's because, in the full game, the training academy option takes you through how to strike the ball at power, as well as providing early opponents on the World Tour (exhaustive single player mode) that are beatable simply by following the early tutorials.

Things do get hard quite quikly though, and by rising up through the bottom hundred ranked players into the top 200, the skill level ranks up considerably, requiring some very sharp thinking and reflexes if you are to avoid diving around the court, struggling to meet every shot that comes your way.

The World Tour mode is 20 years long (not quite real-time!), and so does provide plenty of opportunities to train your virtual tennis star (male or female) using a great variety of mini-games that themselves get increasingly more demanding with higher difficulty levels. The mini-games though become the stars as the actual tennis gets very tricky, and it's always nice to switch to a quick battle on Bingo, Bowling or bash the barrel, if the actual opponents become too frustrating.

The online mode is a well-featured package, which sometimes suffers from lag, but is mostly well covered by fast servers and players that do not tend to drop out of matches too often (thanks to the revised length of matches to an arcadey 2 or 3 games - a feature of Virtua Tennis since its inception, thanks to its arcade roots).

This is a pretty-looking title, although it certainly should be, given the limited scale of a tennis court and its maximum of 4 participants. Still, the animation is top-notch, although the spectating staff on the side-lines are animated, they lack realistic responses, since they do not dodge or even react when a ball pops them in the groin at 90 mph!

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful

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