Fun game that's good for filling time...
The main game mode of Virtua Tennis heavily reflects that of a competing title, Top Spin. You begin at rank 300 and through improving your skills and beating players, your ranking increases and the tournaments available to your character rise in number. However the difficulty level significantly increases as well. This is one of our gripes with the game - to raise rank you beat players which is fair enough, but to raise skills you need to practice. Our problem with this is that the mini games don’t really change all that much so it becomes quite repetitive. As well as this you need to factor in rest weeks otherwise your player becomes too fatigued. The difference between rank 300 and 200 in difficulty is staggering and really shows how hard the game can be even after it pads you into the game rather than throwing you into the deep end. Another crazy thing about the career mode is that no matter what rank you are, you are always playing the professionals. So rank 300, you are playing stars like Hantuchova or Federer. While this allows you to get to the pros straight away, it doesn’t seem all that realistic and there is no reward for gaining ranks in terms of gaining access to play as other players. The action is fast and furious in the doubles and singles as the players have been built up with their maximum stats. If you find yourself tiring of the career mode, then the exhibitions will reinvigorate the freshness of this title. It certainly did for us. It’s just a shame that it is only exhibition where this happens as reaching this level with you player in the career mode takes around six to eight hours of gameplay.