Game: Virtua Tennis 2009
Platform: Xbox 360; PS3
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sumo Digital
ESRB: Everyone
Genre: A Tennis Game circa 2003
Players: 1-4
What's Hot: Updated rosters
What's Not: Everything else found within the game's disc and online service
Review by: Brendon Lindsey
Once upon a time, I was a pretty avid tennis player. Sure, once I entered the latter stages of high school I quit tennis to focus more on other activities and sports, but for years, at least four days a week, people could find me at the park behind our house, alternating between hitting forehands on the tennis courts and trying to dunk the ball on the adjacent basketball court. (Guess which one I usually failed at?) So take it from someone who has spent years playing both real tennis and the Virtua Tennis series when I say Virtua Tennis 2009 is a major misfire for the series, and fans of the franchise or tennis players looking for a tennis video game would be much better off saving a lot of cash and picking up Virtua Tennis 3.
This latest version practically is the previous version. There are two “major” changes to the gameplay in this iteration: the constant diving shots have been removed, and the game appears to have been slowed down a bit to make it look more realistic. The sound effects sound exactly the same, online mode is still bugged to hell, and the rest is pretty much just what you'd find in VT3. No innovative new modes, no new attempts at controls; just a couple model and speed tweaks.
Even then, the removal of diving shots should have an asterisk by it, as players will now stumble to one knee and scoop shots up. So, yay! Realistic in that people can't constantly dive to hit the ball … but they can always manage to drop to one knee and scoop it over the net!
The only thing that seems to have been upgraded is the graphics, and even then the models are a few years behind the curve. Some players look spot-on, but if you pick five random players, at least three of them are going to look off in some way.
If the online play were fixed, I'd be willing to forgive the fact that Sumo Digital managed to make the game worse by trying to transition from arcade to sim by removing dives and slowing the pace. But, as I've mentioned, it wasn't. Should you get this game and attempt to play online, I sure hope you're not the type to throw controllers at your TV. (If you are, make sure you've got some nice insurance.) One of the most common bugs is the freezing ball. Basically, someone will hit the ball... and it will just freeze in the air. The solution? One of you has to quit and take a loss; otherwise you both run around in a horrible game I've come to call “Whose Service Will Disconnect First and Cause Them to Lose?”
The other major bug – if you can believe it – a continuation of one of the most annoying online play bugs from Virtua Tennis 3. The “Let first service” bug would basically randomly decide your serve was a let, even if you've had a nice rally and hit a game winner. The result was countless pissed off players, untold lost matches that should have been won, and a few individuals who managed to find out how to abuse the bug to get unlimited mulligans.
You would think such a major bug (and exploit) would be fixed, right? The good news: you'll no longer have to re-do serves when you encounter the let first service bug. The bad news: you won't be re-doing them because the game will be frozen. How they managed to make such a known bug worse is beyond me.
Simply put: do not buy Virtua Tennis 2009. I could write a two page review with “Don't buy Virtua Tennis 2009, stick with Virtua Tennis 3” over and over again and I still wouldn't have said it enough times. There is absolutely no reason to buy this over the superior (and cheaper) VT3.
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