Get your tennis rackets! It's time to hit the courts in Virtua Tennis: World Tour for the PSP!
In World Tour mode, you create two characters. A male and a female. You choose where their home location is, and you start your race to the top of the rankings.
Training both of your characters might seem easy, but it is a little difficult. First, the training mini-games can be a little hard to a new tennis player, and using the PSP's little analog nubb doesn't help. But, you get used to it, and your characters get better, thus easing the difficulty of training. Second, you don't just do what you want, then choose any match to play whenever you want. You have a calender, and the Men and Womans events are spaced out giving you time to prep the person needed for that next match. Trust me, you will need all of that time. Each training session takes up one week, and the matches are a few weeks a part. You don't get NEARLY as much EXP if you lose as you do when you win, so it can get frustrating... Third, doubles matches... Not only do you have to pay someone to be your doubles partner, but they only play with you for 2 months... Meaning you have to pay them ever time you need them... And you start out with NO MONEY... So you have to win the first couple of matches to get things going...
When you are in a normal singles match, get ready to hit the ball back and forth for a while,. if you're good... The ball doesn't really go that far in one direction when you hit it that way, so the computer can often hit is easily. It is probably best to train your Volley and Footwork the most so you can stay at the net and smash it back over to your opponent for some quick points.
The graphics are fairly good, but there is very little character customization when creating your players... The pro players look fine, but sometimes they look distorted while raising their arms or something of that sort...
The sound is good, but how many different sounds do you need in a tennis game? Some grunting sounds, bouncing ball sounds, announcers as in telling the score and when the ball goes out... And the crowd cheering... Those sounds are done pretty good, but who is really paying attention to the sound when you are in an intense tennis match! Rock on...!
Now loading times... I don't know if it is my UMD, or just the game on an UMD, but the game tends to lag in the menus. Even when moving from place to place on the world map it gets caught up in between options. Quiet annoying. but the actually tennis playing parts are great.
Overall, I love this game. Tennis and sports fan should pick this game up.