Previews// Virtua Tennis 3 - PS3

Proper Next-Gen
There are also, of course, tournaments to enter. This is when you realise that you’re dealing with a proper next-gen game. For once, the pampered tennis brats you play against are actually recognisable. And they do interact with you occasionally.

Often, you might find yourself having to play mixed doubles, for example. I’ve found myself picking Maria Sharapova as my partner, and we now have a bit of a thing going – she often turns up randomly when I’m practising, and is full of praise when we win tournaments. You also notice that, for example, clay courts become more scuffed through the course of a match, and ball marks persist.

But the next-gen effect is most noticeable in the artificial intelligence – you swiftly discover that different players adopt different styles that tally with those they adopt in real life. And they also adapt their styles for different surfaces, which is annoying at first, because it means they beat you. But you can always figure out how to counter them - although my big-serving, slow-moving alter-ego still has real trouble countering dinky little drop-shot merchants who will run around and get anything back on slow surfaces.

Luckily, you can always go back to the Tennis Academy or the training mini-games to improve any attributes in which your player is lacking – indeed, you often have to, as you will pick up injuries and a broken leg, say, will reduce your mobility. Obviously, as you start winning tournaments, you will move up the rankings and, particularly when you break into the Top 100, things really start to get interesting, with the initially gentle AI acquiring plenty of bite.

Despite the lack of an online mode, Virtua Tennis 3 is a great multiplayer game – obviously, the nature of tennis means that four people can play without having to split the screen, which makes things an awful lot more bearable. When you do play multiplayer, player selection is quite important, according to the type of game you prefer.

I always go for the big-hitters, or the serve-and-volley merchants, as the one thing I haven’t figured out how to do is to play drop-shots (apparently, you have to charge up a slice to its fullest extent, but perhaps that simply doesn’t work in my early code). It would be nice to showcase your VT3 skills online, but the game is so good to play against a mate that it would seem churlish to quibble too much.

Virtua Tennis 3 is what games are all about: fantasy. And the fact that it sits at the cutting edge of next-gen realism merely enhances that fantasy. You really do believe that your hard-learnt skills are enabling you to make Roger Federer look like a chump, and that you’ve made Maria Sharapova happy. And who could ask for more than that?