by Cro Morgan » Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:47
(bold type = good news)
From IGN UK...
If ever you wanted a concise demonstration of how far video games have come, take a look at its recreation of tennis. Only a handful of generations it was Pong's abstract lines zipping about that represented the sport; now Virtua Tennis 4 is all that's cutting edge bundled into one slice of arcade fun. Played out in dazzling 3D and using the Move controller, it's a game that proves that Sony is positioning its PlayStation 3 not only as the console of the moment, but also the console of tomorrow.
There's even room for the staunch traditionalists who baulk at motion control and prohibitively expensive 3D technology; Virtua Tennis 4 is the first installment proper in a much adored albeit increasingly stale series in some time, and to mark the occasion SEGA's got its original team back in Japan on the job. That much is clear from the visual style alone, and beneath the shock and awe of the 3D presentation there's enough evidence to prove that this is from the company that brought blue skies to gaming, it's lines bold and its palette equally so.
The game beneath all this is also familiar, though from the brief demonstration available at Sony's Gamescom preview event it's hard to gauge too much. With control restricted to the Move wand itself, the player's footwork around the court is left to the computer's whim, leaving them free to concentrate on the art of swinging wild and furious.
And so, disappointingly, playing this early version of Virtua Tennis 4 isn't dissimilar to Nintendo's approach to the sport in Wii Sports. There's certainly a subtlety to what's capable with the motion control, and it smartly recognizes driven forehands, sliced backhands and smashes amongst other shots. The viewpoint, in this demonstration, is fixed to a close third person camera that switches in and out of first person as the ball draws near, with the player's arm appearing as a ghostly outline as a shot's about to be fired off.
There was also sadly no chance to test it fully, with a computer-controlled Andy Murray proving fairly dumb opposition as he stood transfixed on our more powerful returns, and nor was there a chance to see the game in its vanilla form when played without the bells and whistles of 3D and motion control, but there's certainly hope that Virtua Tennis 4 could make SEGA's aging franchise relevant once again.
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