PSP Review: Virtual Tennis 3, Tennis Harder

Sega has been completely dominating the PSP with tennis titles, which can only be a good thing for fans of the cheerful, arcade-inspired Virtua Tennis series. Virtua Tennis 3, the latest Sega offering, serves as a solid follow-up to the original Virtua Tennis which came out for the PSP two years ago. It doesn’t offer anything truly groundbreaking or new, but there are enough gameplay tweaks and added features here to make the game a worthy purchase for people looking to get their tennis fix on the go. Read on to find out why we think that Virtua Tennis 3 still reigns as world champion on the PSP.

Virtua Tennis 3 does a better job than its predecessor at capturing the important role of intimidation and psychology in the world of professional tennis. Occasionally after a match or a practice session, other characters will approach you and offer some terse words of advice (the first time that we were approached by Taylor Dent in the game we thought he was going to beat the crap out of us). Your virtual “coach” will dispense other useful advice and gossip about other players in the form of emails, which pop up on the world map frequently. Finally, your character will occasionally get the heeby-jeebies, exclaiming that he or she “doesn’t feel good about today”. On days like this it is best to rest up at home that face competition on the court. The game offers three types of rest, which will produce different effects on your virtual body, depending on how much time you are willing to expend.

At the heart of Virtua Tennis series are the mini games, and this title is no exception. The game features more than a dozen court challenges, some of which are similar to those present in the first PSP game. There are advancing robot ballmachines to dispatch, targets to hit in painstaking order, giant dumptrucks full of tennis balls to avoid, and much more. Minigames retain the same gestures and animations from the tournament matches, resulting in pure comedy when your virtual character pumps their fists in victory after having successfully picked up three tons of gigantic wayward fruit. Winning these court challenges boosts your player’s skill in a variety of categories, and also unlocks progressively harder versions of the minigames, which can get frustratingly devious at higher levels.

Better hurry Federer, that fruit isn’t going to collect itself

Virtua Tennis 3 contains some nice graphical flourishes and highly detailed character animations that really bring the game of tennis to life on the small screen. During tournaments, the camera will often switch to a split-screen mode that captures both players’ reactions after an important point is won or lost. Court environments are varied and detailed, although low-resolution textures are noticable in a few spots when the camera zooms in, a problem that was not apparent in the first Virtua Tennis on PSP. Music consists of up-beat techno tracks that do a good job of making players feel as if they are the stars of their own cheesy 1980s sports movie. The highlight of the audio presentation is the awesome announcer voiceovers, which belt out encouragement during practice mode and announce scores during tournament matches. We found ourselves trying to knock all of the pins over in the bowling minigame just so we could hear the announcer yell “YES!!” one more time.

AI seems much improved over the original World Tour. At the beginning stages, opponents will not offer much challenge, but win a few tournaments and the difficulty ramps up considerably. You will have to make good use of the training facilities and court challenges in order to master the techniques necessary to win at the high-level tournaments. Of course, the challenge provided by AI opponents just makes victory that much sweeter.

Court surfaces have a noticable impact on gameplay and present specific challenges

There is no infrastructure multiplayer in Virtua Tennis 3, however the fully-featured ad-hoc modes almost make up for this omission. Matches are lag-free, and allow up to four players to take part in doubles matches. Unfortunately, the game does not include any kind of a game sharing mode, which would have made a lot of sense considering the lack of infrastructure.

Overall we were mightily impressed with Virtua Tennis 3, and we can recommend it to newcomers and veterans of the series alike. The home console versions of the game might offer flashier graphics and better online support, but the PSP holds its own and manages to offer a superb game of tennis on the small screen.

Things we liked:

Things we didn’t like:

Final Score: 9/10