Seasoned arcade publishers Sega and Namco have done well for themselves with their respective tennis franchises, producing games that are far more fun than you might expect from such a seemingly stuffy sport. Now, Konami is trying its hand at a tennis game with WTA Tour Tennis. Released earlier this year for the PlayStation 2 (as well as the Game Boy Advance), the new Xbox and GameCube versions of the game are largely identical and again offer mixed results. A few key gameplay and graphical issues serve to keep the game from reaching the same level of quality as other tennis franchises.
For the acronym impaired, WTA stands for Women's Tennis Association, and the game's roster consists of 20 players who have competed in the WTA Tour, including some of the most recognizable names in women's tennis. Jennifer Capriati, Ai Sugiyama, and Serena Williams are present, though oddly, big-name contenders Venus Williams and Anna Kournikova have been omitted from the roster. You'll notice the game's no-frills presentation from the main menu, where WTA Tour Tennis offers three modes of play: tour, exhibition, and tournament. The tour mode emulates the real-life WTA Tour by putting you through a series of ladder-style tournaments. The exhibition mode lets you customize a single match of tennis, and the tournament mode is a mix of the tour and the exhibition modes, letting you customize the length and the seeding of a ladder-style tournament.
The game mechanics are similar to those of Sega's Virtua Tennis games, but the pacing is noticeably slower and more methodical. When serving, you can choose from three different types of serves. The flat serve will shoot the ball straight down the court, and the spin and slice serves will cause the ball to curve sharply to the right or the left, respectively. During play, you can hit a straight flat shot by pressing the A button, or you can hit a topspin shot by pressing the X button, which sacrifices ball control for speed. You can also give your shots more power by double-tapping the button right before you make contact with the ball, but it will take a bit of practice before you'll get the timing down on this technique. As you play through the game, you may notice a few gameplay quirks. As in Virtua Tennis, you have to press your shot button and hold the direction you want to send the ball, but this can be incredibly touchy, and you'll often watch with frustration as your player swats at thin air. You won't see players diving to save shots either, which, when combined with the AI's susceptibility to smash shots, keeps the matches much shorter than they should be and makes rallies all but nonexistent.
WTA Tour Tennis lacks the graphical polish of other tennis games and isn't the best-looking Xbox game, either. The game has a simple look to it, and a prevalence of low-definition textures makes it appear rather drab. The animation is good, and in certain situations you'll see players make shots from behind their backs or between their legs. Players will kick up dust as they move around the court, and their rackets will light up in a small starburst when they execute a really strong shot. The frame rate issues found in WTA on the PlayStation 2 have been stomped out. However, despite a few good points or improvements, the general presentation has remained unchanged, and what was passable on the PlayStation 2 just doesn't look good here. The sound in WTA Tour Tennis is very understated, but what's there is pretty solid. The sound of the ball making contact with the racket is quite satisfying, and players will grunt and shout throughout the match. The ambient crowd effects are well executed, and you'll occasionally hear members of the crowd cheering on specific players. Music is only played behind the menu screens, though what music is there is very forgettable filler.
Players already familiar with arcade-style tennis games like Virtua Tennis will probably find the gameplay in WTA Tour Tennis a bit sluggish, and the lack of variety in the modes doesn't help the game's case, either. On its own terms, WTA Tour Tennis offers a decent game of tennis, but truth be told, the game's biggest strength is its lack of competition.
