Virtua Tennis 2009

Sumo serve up an ace

Plick! Plock! Plick! Plock! Boil them down to their bare essentials and tennis games are nothing more than Pong draped in lovingly rendered, high fidelity visuals, with lush green grass filling in for what was once impenetrable black, and sweaty, grunting tennis stars replacing what used to be pixellated white paddles. It's a predictably simplistic if somewhat glib way to look at tennis games in general, but things have come a long way since that bleeping white pixel first bounced around arcade cabinets and TV screens back in the early 70s.

That's our stupid comparison dealt with, now onto the serious business of whether Virtua Tennis 2009 is actually any good. Taking up the reigns from previous developer Sega-AM3, Sheffield-based dev Sumo Digital have been tasked with updating the Virtua Tennis franchise, starting with the series' first ever instalment to include a year at the end of the title. Perhaps the fact that this breaks the tradition of numbered VT titles (this would have been number 4) is slightly telling, possibly marking the first of what will become annual updates for Sega's beloved tennis series. This will also be the first time that Sega compete with EA Sport's own Grand Slam Tennis game, which is licensed up to its eyeballs much as you'd expect - a feature that VT sadly fails to replicate. The only licences here are player names, likenesses and the famous Davis Cup tournament.

This latest iteration of the popular tennis series sees a few minor tweaks to the overall gameplay experience, tightening up the frantic arcade pacing of Virtua Tennis 3 with an ever so slightly more realistic model. The most significant adjustment is an ostensibly minor change that actually succeeds in improving the ebb and flow of the action tenfold. In getting rid of the unrelenting, unrealistic dive motion from VT 3, Sumo has made Virtua Tennis 2009 a far superior experience to its predecessor, transforming rallies into edge-of-the-seat battles where an ill-judged return can cause a fatal stumbling error that can be difficult - but not impossible - to recover from. Accuracy and careful ball placement is now key, with forehands, backhands, lobs, smashes, drop shots, volleys and cross-court strokes all coming into play at various points during each game.

Beyond dispensing with the ludicrous diving from VT 3, Sumo have fleshed out the huge single-player World Tour mode, ramping up the number of unlockables, revamping the bizarre training mini-games in addition to introducing extra tournaments including the aforementioned, fully licensed Davis Cup. World Tour remains the main game mode in Virtua Tennis, where you create a character - using the vastly overhauled customisation options - and lead them through a lengthy career that spans literally hundreds of individual tennis matches and tournaments. Structured in exactly the same way as before, the VT World Tour involves training and levelling up your character as they compete in various events that when successfully completed, count towards unlocking new players and gear for your player. Trouble is, there's a good few hours of boringly simple matches to wade through before you're able to sufficiently level up and rise through the ranks to take on more challenging opponents.

Levelling up is achieved through completing various training challenges, after which your progress bars for one of three separate disciplines steadily fills. It's a long and arduous process meaning that World Tour requires heroic perseverance in order to make it to the meatier stuff. The VT Academy, Online Tour and the 12 surreal mini-games should keep you coming back for more though. Speaking of which, the so-called Court Games are back with a vengeance for VT 2009, offering an array of new, even more insane challenges to master. Highlights include Pot Shot - a gigantic game of pool - and Block Buster - an enormous Tetris-style colour matching block game. All of the Court Games are available to play in multiplayer and provide all kinds of fun with friends.

Virtua Tennis 2009 has also been given a slight visual overhaul, with likenesses for the major players such as Federer, Murray, Sharapova and Nadal looking absolutely spot-on. Newly appointed legends such as Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg are given the same thorough treatment, but the same can't be said for the less renowned players who are a wee bit rough around the edges, still sporting the slightly waxy-skinned look from VT 3. The differing court surfaces all look the part though, reacting the way they should to make their inclusion more than merely cosmetic. However, there's little in the way of tournament atmosphere courtside, with flat, characterless crowds chanting the same stock loops repeatedly. Granted, the sound is a marked improvement over the cacophonous music and rubbish crowd effects from VT 3, and the escalating cheers after an intense rally certainly add more to the overall atmosphere than previously. Still, the sound remains the weakest element of the game, especially when compared to other sports titles, including the forthcoming Grand Slam Tennis, which features crowd reactions recorded from last year's Wimbledon and a commentary from Pat Cash.

Despite all of the welcome improvements Virtua Tennis 2009 brings, the game is essentially a significantly updated version of VT 3, tuned and revamped just in time for this year's Wimbledon. Sumo's previous experience on Sega Superstars Tennis and their conversion of Virtua Tennis 3 for the PSP certainly shines through here, making VT 2009 undoubtedly the best tennis game you can currently buy. If you already own VT 3 however, you might want to think twice before you consider upgrading to this. Virtua Tennis 2009 plays a better, more compelling game than any other tennis game around, but it is still fundamentally more of the same. Nonetheless, if you're in the market for a new set of balls, then this is certainly a game that you'll love.

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By Richard Walker