

Once filled, a tap and hold of the Circle/B button will fire off a strong fast shot of your character's chosen speciality. A on-screen bar will charge slowly over the course of the match. AM3 has accentuated each player's preferred play style for a greater degree of variation.īut there's also a new gameplay element in practice. Paths split and divide over the course of each tour, the forked road only offered if you've ranked high enough by that point ranking is marked by Stars this time round, simplifying things for at-a-glance stat checks.Īs expected, Virtua Tennis 4 comes equipped with an Exhibition mode for quick matches and a more linear progression up the ranks of the tennis heroes of today. Each will map out a path through the geographical locales and will thread stop-offs, such as training, mini-games, events and rest days, throughout. You've four tours in all, split roughly across the main continents and each finishing with a iconic tennis tournament. Let's look at the core gameplay modes first.Ĭareer has been given a great facelift, sprucing up the old girl with a sexy multi-branched, multi-choice world map trip that'll cause Western RPG hounds to lift their nose for an appreciative sniff. We'll get to the different console versions and their individual strengths and weaknesses in a second.
New virtua tennis 4 series#
Its why we fell in love with the series in the first place.Īnd, control issues aside, there is a lot to love with Virtua Tennis 4. That VT's timing is slightly off is all the more pronounced because of the franchise's full-on affair with the pick up and play arcade handling. Virtua Tennis is no different and there's a definite difference than before with the correlation between button press and racquet hit.įor the first time there's a marked swing towards 2K's title, missed hits excused in part to learning its leaning towards more tactical and simulated play.

And secondly, you'd imagine to give the developers something to tinker with year after year. One, to offer even long-time players something new to learn. Annoyed grunts and furtive glances pad-wise fall throughout the afternoon.Įach iteration of any sports title has slight control changes. Their number are small, but its noticeable - and they're not all due to rusty skills. Sliced balls ricochet past when they should be returned. Watching and playing the game sees easy shots missed and slow reactions from on-screen players cost dearly. The key word bandied about is "sluggish". It's a thought picked up by the massed journalists and picked apart in a post-game pint in the nearest drinking hole. After coming away from an extensive afternoon session playing all three console versions of Virtua Tennis, something seems off.
