Virtua Tennis 2009 Review

Let's jump straight in with the World Tour. Before you start, you are as ever asked to create a player model. There is a lot of detail with this editor but not too much detail to get confused with. Simple face, hair and body size can be adjusted, but nothing more is really needed. After creating your odd looking human of which can be male or female, you are entered into the tour that is equal to your gender. The first thing you notice is the familiar globe where you choose your residence. Everything is near enough the same. You have your home where you can choose your clothes, go for a rest, check your records and find the activities that are dotted around the globe along with the tournaments.

Your trainer for the world tour is Tim Henman who according to the game is "The Legendary Pro Tennis Player - Tim Henman" of which I'm not too sure about. He is there to guide you around your tour and train you up in the Training Center. Training is a simple process and is different from the previous games. Instead of having attributes to increase such as serving and groundstrokes etc., you increase your level to obtain new styles of play. After choosing these play styles, you get a boost in that area.

After having a look around the globe at what there is, you can start a practice match with someone who you will be partnering up with for doubles games. Practice matches like this are proposed to you throughout the tour and once the opponent is beaten, you gain experience and you get the chance to choose them for doubles games. Only in practice matches, training and mini-games can you gain statistics experience.

Starting up the initial practice game was where I started noticing the problems. The loading times are appalling. It takes about 30 seconds to load a simple single player match. During this loading screen I noticed something else: the character models are both disturbing and identical. It was only a mere hair style that separated my character from the evil twin that stood before him. As the game is loading, the characters are shown on the screen in a certain pose of which they are almost always the same and they are very, very strange looking. These body positions and the facial expressions just creeped me out.

Although the loading wasn't too promising, the gameplay itself isn't bad at all. The character animations are very accurate and it's satisfying to jostle the players around the court as you wait for the ball. The animations may be good, but some parts of the gameplay are a bit pain. In Virtua Tennis 3, it was possible to hit the net and for the ball to just bounce in or out making the game very exciting, and was something that kept you on the edge of your seat. In 2009, this is not so. Apart from serves, the ball always bounces in. This method takes a lot of the realism out of the game and makes the game sometimes very predictable. As you travel higher in the rankings, it can be very easy to judge where your opponent is going to hit the ball even when the competition should be getting harder.

The graphics are very good on both the character models and the court surroundings themselves. It's obvious to see a massive difference in the look of player created models and the original game models, which is understandable of course. Each male and female Pro looks very realistic - they move and hit the balls as they would in real life showing that someone must have studied how they move during the development of the game. There are a couple of silly glitches when the trophies are being showcased but other than that, there isn't much to moan about at all. That said, for some reason my character likes to do the John Cena 'You can't see me' hand swipe every now and then.

Longevity in a game should be one of the main things people think about when making a game. You would think that there is no limit to how long you can play a game for; the longer, the better. Well you would be wrong, in the case of Virtua Tennis 2009 anyway. The game's World Tour mode is the longest most repetitive main game mode I have ever played. way the is set-up,Beginning World Tour sees you start at the bottom of the Amateur rankings - Rank 100. You have to work your way to number one by competing in tournaments all around the year. Once you have done that, you have to start again, with the Pro rankings. Starting from 100 you work your way to the top of these ranks.

Seems a simple idea, but every time you complete a single and a doubles tournament, you move an absolute maximum of 5 places. No matter how much higher the person you beat is in the rankings, you will always move 3-5 places up the table. I have played about 6 hours of the World Tour and I am only at rank 55 on the Amateur tour. The matches are very repetitive and easy, so much so that I haven't lost a single game to an AI opponent after 6 hours of play. It's easy and boring to carry on playing hour after hour.

The only things that make the World Tour bearable are the mini-games. As in every Virtua Tennis 2009 game, there is a great selection of mini-games. My favourite amongst the bunch is ‘Avalanche'. The popular mini-game gets you to run around a tennis court avoiding massive tennis balls coming towards you while grabbing fruit. It's super fun and very enjoyable to play, as are all the mini-games. 

Online play is something that is a must in all next generation sports games, and Virtua Tennis 2009 caters for those needs. Leaderboards are something that I enjoy looking at and competing with. Each mini-game has a leaderboard as does the multiplayer match rankings. The online competitive games are well designed and thought out. Although there is some lag when playing, it isn't too much to put you off. I personally got my unbeaten record handed to me on a dinner plate as soon as I went online, which shows that there is some variety in the human player games if not in the AI controlled games. Doubles and singles matches are available to play and the game settings can be changed to suit the hosts preferred options.

Achievements are indeed a must as this is a 360 title and the game has got some rather good ones. The first one I got (by accident of course), was "Fore!". This achievement involves hitting a steward with the tennis ball; a rather amusing achievement to say the least. There are plenty of secret achievements within the game, but none are so hard you can't get them without dedicating half your life to them.

Virtua Tennis 2009 is a hard game to recommend. It has its good share of positives and negatives but in the end, if you want to buy a tennis game, you won't look any further than the Sega title. This is a game that you would probably play for a couple hours, a week tops, before it will get way too tedious. A great game for some, but a nightmare for others.