Virtua Tennis 4 Critic Reviews

SEGA keeps the Virtua Tennis series alive with its 4th entry into mix, bringing along a bundle of upgrades and fresh game modes to keep us swinging away.

Virtua Tennis 4 is offering a lot more than Virtua Tennis 2009. A nice career mode is making a simulation out of Virtua Tennis 4.

Finally, Virtua Tennis comes back from hell with a new and noteworthy chapter of this long-running series. Like "Rafa" Nadal, Top Spin 4 remains #1 in the world rankings, but Virtua 4 could be seen as it's Djokovic or Federer.

With some good gameplay additions and a new twist on the career mode, Virtua Tennis 4 still manages to play a great game of arcade tennis.

The core strength of the experience ensures Virtua Tennis 4 is best in class where it matters, on the court. Likewise, a well-structured World Tour mode, while slightly anachronistic in its straight Japanese presentation, provides a sense of journey and progression that is wholly engaging. But the motion controls, core selling points for many buyers, are woefully implemented and provide little interest or value.

For every person who hates the board game World Tour concept, there will be someone who loves it and will be cursing this review.

As an arcade game, Virtua Tennis 4 is great and has no major flaws. It's just a shame that Top Spin 4 is better in almost everything, making SEGA's effort almost incidental.

Sega has produced a better game with Virtua Tennis 4. With the added depth to the career mode and solid motion control support, you're getting a good tennis title. While it's not perfect, Sega appears to be guiding this tennis franchise in the right direction now.

Virtua Tennis doesn't take itself so seriously and that's great because gaming should be all about fun. The Kinect and Move support is pretty lame so it's best to stick with the classic controllers.

Virtua Tennis 4 does not offer anything new to anyone who has traveled the previous games, but this is not a series that releases annually.

As with the rest of Virtua Tennis' shtick it's a simple system that hides its complexity well. Along with an addictive, board game-style World Tour mode,it's hard not to recommend Virtua Tennis 4. Perhaps the stellar motion controls are relegated to throwaway mini-game, rather than being fully integrated.

Still a fantastic multiplayer game.

Despite all of this nonsense, Virtua Tennis 4 still packs in plenty of authentic traditional tennis.

Virtua Tennis 4 makes some steps forward with a good career mode, but fails in delivering real changes inside the gameplay. While it still represents a good arcade experience, Top Spin 4 is surely the best choice available among the tennis simulations.

Virtua Tennis 4 is great fun for newbies and hardcore players alike, a good arcade experience, but Top Spin 4 is surely the best choice available among the tennis simulations.

It's a bit sad they were not able to improve or expand the original idea. At least, this team what they call the "supershot", a special shot that is almost unstoppable. You can use it whenever you fill it playing in your own style and we find this system really interesting, as it allows to have different type of players and more variety regarding CPU players.

Not a bad game then by any stretch, but hopefully the last small iteration before Sega's inaugural next-next-gen outing.

Both Top Spin 4 and Virtua Tennis 4 are good games that have a lot to offer tennis fans. Part of me wishes there could be an amalgamation of the two, but as it stands I'll end with this: Top Spin 4 is a better game overall, but Virtua Tennis 4 would definitely be more fun to play for the casual fan. It's almost as if it's striving not to be taken seriously, what with the over-the-top mini-games and fancy dress events. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Absolutely not. Depending on what sort of experience you want, the choice is really up to you.

This is a good sequel but it is far from the expectations it had generated. It doesn't change the formula of previous games, and the addition of the supershot may not be liked by series' fans.

On it's own Virtua Tennis 4 is a great game but contextualised by previous games in the series, you can't help but feel a distinct sense of deja vu. The perpetual game play can't be masked by slightly better graphics, in the same way that adding pointless elements to the game play can't excuse the fact it's a slightly shinier version of Virtua Tennis 3 with an extra side of clutter.