Virtua Tennis 3

If you thought Virtua Tennis: World Tour was the best tennis game that Sega came out with then think again. The Virtua Tennis 3 takes the crown of the best tennis game from the World Tour edition. This new edition is pretty easy to play and so more and more people are moving towards this game. It is basically a new and improved version of the World Tour. The developers rather then focusing on a totally new game have refined it to such an extent that it has become a joy to play. There is full career mode and some cool mini games. The game starts off by you creating your avatar choosing from a rather limited bunch of options. Then you select your home country. And from here on you try to make your player be counted and to move up in the world rankings from 300^th to number 1^st. Your player goes through tennis school which is a combination of different skills that you have to master.

Your player gets experience points for mastering different skills. The difficulty level goes up as you master one skill after the other. After you have got the required experience you start your game in the career mode where you get to play in different locations including Spain, Italy, China, USA, France and England. You get to play indoors and outdoors with different types of courts like clay, grass and hard courts. Your stamina level decreases as you play in different tournaments so to avoid injury you can either take a vacation from playing or drink energy drinks. On winning you get awarded different items which takes the fun out of the game because getting rewarded by money feels better. So for all you tennis buffs this is a game to really play and enjoy.

Top Spin 3

Tennis games have been considerably easier to make as compared to other sport games like cricket and football because there are only two players to be controlled and there isn’t much dynamics to the game that makes it up to par with other games. The racket doesn’t change shape and the only thing separating the players is a net. But the people at 2K Sports and PAM Development have made great tennis games for us to enjoy. They started with Top Spin which was a thumping success. Then came the Top Spin 2 which didn’t do as well as its predecessor.

But now Top Spin 3 has taken up the mantel of being the best tennis game from the first Top Spin game. The game itself has a world class career mode with the progression from amateur to pro really very fairly played out in front of you. The create a player mode is really dynamic with so many choices for creating your avatar that sometimes it becomes a bit difficult to choose from all of them. Visually the game is a master piece the only thing holding it back are the non realistic fans and the occasional hanging up in between plays. So all you tennis buffs grab a copy and start smashin.

Grand Slam Tennis

Grand slam tennis by EA sports is the first game to support Wii Motion plus but is woefully let down by the complexity of the controls and the hopelessness of the player to control the avatar. EA sports has ventured into the tennis genre after almost 10 years and many people were hoping that the result would be at par with EA’s other offerings. This is the first game to have all the grand slam titles included in it. The game offers 23 different past and present players including 23 past or present players, including Serena Williams, Justine Henin, Boris Becker, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray. The game is letdown by the difficult control schemes.

The controls and angle of the rackets must be all so perfect that even a slight mistake on part of the player warrants a fault or point to the other player. And sometimes it feels that the AI randomly chooses to give away points by not running towards the ball or not swinging the racket at the right time. There is no practice mode, only thing close to a practice mode is a tutorial with the ball machine and that doesn’t help in the improving the experience for the player. An extra feature is the Get Fit that calculates how much calories you’ve burnt while playing the game. This game is for people who don’t mind the steep learning curve and uncontrollable avatars.