I love me some Virtua Tennis and that’s no secret. It was probably my favourite arcade-to-console port back in the days of the Dreamcast, and every time I’ve seen an arcade cabinet with it running in the last twelve years, I’ve just had to have a go – despite completing most of the home versions. Last year’s edition of the game was pretty, but far too easy, majorly unbalanced in multiplayer and…
…this year’s edition is no different.
In fact, Virtua Tennis 2009 is even easier than before, when playing the CPU. I have to qualify that by saying that I’m aware that I’ve been playing the game for a long, long time and that the control system hasn’t changed a jot since the first version was released for the good old DC – so I’m liable to be better than a new player at it. However, that doesn’t mean that I should be able to win twenty-seven straight tournaments without dropping a single point (other than my own double fault once or twice), with the default – unimproved – created character no less. What’s more depressing is that with the newly-expanded World Tour mode having a hundred amateur players and a hundred and fifty pro players who all start above you in the rankings, it’s going to take a long, long, long, long time to get anywhere near what you’d call a challenge. Why? Well, apparently, winning a tournament where you’ve annihilated three players who are ranked five places higher than you is only enough to allow you to climb a maximum of two places up the rankings ladder. Who decided that was a decent way of doing things, I don’t know.
It may sound like I’m going on about it, but it completely ruins the single player game to the point that you’ll be so bored of beating the slow and incapable AI opposition that you’ll want to stop playing after an hour or two of it. If you get that far, that is. I don’t quite know how to get across how unbelievably unchallenging the game is, so I’ll throw some examples your way. In one match, I managed to win (again, without dropping a point) with my left hand, whilst sending a text with my right. Another match (admittedly, they’re only “best of three games” affairs) took a whole one minute and four seconds for me to complete – and I could have done it quicker had I not taken a second or two to move my character before a serve. Another was won just by using topspin shots and another just by using slices.
At the lower levels, every AI serve can generally be returned to win the point with a simple topspin shot up the line, and every returned serve of yours can be directed across court and past the outstretched arm of your opponent. Sure, you’ll often get a four or five shot rally going when you’re on serve, but you’ll often be able to win without so much as thinking about it.
When you finally do get to the upper echelons of the rankings, you finally get to play against opponents who can actually return your returns. Again, that’s if you get that far. In other words, you have to wade through four or five hours of guaranteed wins before you even have to think about using the mini games and new Tennis Academy to upgrade your player’s skills. Of course, you can always jump into Arcade mode and crank the difficulty up if you’re desperate for a challenge, and whilst the challenge is more than welcome, you’re then liable to be beaten by something that isn’t your fault – the dreaded stumble.
You see, whereas Virtua Tennis 2008 saw players diving for the ball whenever they were so much as more than an inch away from the ball, the development team have “corrected” this by replacing the dive with a stumble. Frankly, this is even worse than before. With the World Tour being so easy, you won’t notice it, but when you head online and use the professional players on offer, or take on the challenge of arcade mode, you’ll find yourself losing point after point after point because of it. This can be corrected somewhat by pressing your selected shot button a tad later, but the difference between hitting a solid return and hitting a weak return that will be hammered back whilst your player is still getting his balance, is so slight that even the slightest variance in your on-court players’ skills will be exploited every time – making the game seem somewhat unfair for the player with the weaker avatar.
The less said about the sounds that the female players make whilst playing, the better. In one online match, I thought the game had transformed into some bizarre Pokemon tennis game, with the players letting out ridiculous “coo” sounds when hitting any power shots.
And all of this is a travesty – with the simple reason being that everything else about Virtua Tennis 2009 is done so well. The entire game yanks you back to the days when Sega had at least a glimmer of hope of winning the hardware war, and the cheesy hair metal that plays during matches is right at home. Graphically, the game is no slouch, with everything being superbly good – aside from the players themselves. From the traditional view (which isn’t the default one, strangely), the players are – on the whole – animated well, but up close some of them just have weird facial combinations going on. A few of the licensed pros look like an utter mess but in general, the graphical performance – and overall presentation for that matter – is stellar.
Without any single player challenge, all that’s left is multiplayer and – I’m sad to say – the fact that the gameplay has been simplified over the years to the point that you can’t hit any shots out of bounds other than from a serve or from a real slice means that these affairs become very dull rather quickly. There should be some element of risk when playing a mean cross-court shot from the baseline whilst holding the stick fully to the right in order to get the most angle on the ball. There isn’t. It’ll always land just inside the boundary, and that means that pretty much anyone with reactions better than an eighty year old can pick up the game and give you a better challenge than the AI – providing you choose similarly skilled players, of course. On some levels this is a good thing. On others – such as needing some degree of skill to be any good at the game, or indeed having to practice to improve those skills – it isn’t. Online play is fair – without being brilliant – and some of the lag can make the game unplayable at times. Thankfully, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
And yet – despite all of this – Virtua Tennis 2009 does occasionally show sparks of brilliance. Very, very occasionally, you will get into a rally with an decent opponent and you’ll have to think about things a bit more. When this happens, VT2009 can be utterly exhilarating. On top of that, some – not all – of the new minigames are quite good fun. Playing a few racks of 9-ball Pool by serving the cue ball is excellent fun in multiplayer, but other new additions need some serious work on the difficulty balancing because – ironically – they’re almost impossible to complete in the time allowed!
Virtua Tennis 2009 should stand on a plinth as an example to all developers. Underneath that plinth should be a plaque that reads “Balance your AI, or suffer the consequences!” The game is still the best tennis game available for the 360 at the moment, despite having a number of problems that will cause you to tear your hair out. Whether this is because the game is so solid when you remove those problems, or just because the opposition is so dire, would be a tough thing to judge.
When I play a game, I want is a challenge. I understand that new players need to be eased in gently, but the wonderfully pick-up-and-play-friendly controls already accomplish that task, without the clueless opposition. Don’t just throw me an expanded list of generated players to beat with one hand tied behind my back and tell me to crack on with it if you want my money.
The consequences for the lack of balancing in this case are that the only people I can recommend a purchase to are those that have way, way, way too much time on their hands, and who are more than happy to hammer the “A” button like a laboratory rat trying to get a food pill. For four days. Whilst being shown pretty pictures. New players may well lose a point or two in their first match, but that’ll be the extent of the damage as the friendly controls – ironically – are the thing that end up shooting the game in the foot. I’m sorry, Sega and Sumo, but even though you brought me the excellent OutRun Online Arcade – which consequently I’m still addicted to as if you’d supplied it in a syringe – this just isn’t good enough.
