Of the three boys growing up at Lentor in the 80s, I was the only one who didn’t get into Tennis, which I think was the ‘in’ sport back then. Both my brothers did, but I preferred badminton. Maybe it was because tennis involved way too much running about (badminton required more stretching), games were too long, and were also slower-paced.
Now, fast forward by 20 years: another sports game that I’ve tried – and this time with Ling too – has been Virtua Tennis 3. This was one of the first few PS3 games I picked up, and largely because I’ve always been wanting to make sense of those Grand Slam tournaments broadcast live during the events, and that it was a co-op game so Ling could play too.
It may be a game genre thing, but there’s consistently a lot of loving care given to the visuals for famous sporting personalities in games of this type, if on occasion at the expense of background audience fillers. The in-game copy of Roger Federer looks just like the real version, but the background audience looks sort of life-less.
The game was pretty fun too with easily-manageable controls. The campaign for world-title is anything but. Punishing in fact. The computer controlled opponents you play against don’t make mistakes and there’s no room for any from you too. Run in the wrong direction, heck, even a few steps too far to return a shot, and expect your opponent to send his return immediately on the far side.
Ling played the game too, though after I beat her a few times when we played as opponents, she wanted only to play in the Doubles team LOL.
I think I won about 90% of the tournaments in the campaign before finally giving up. But that was a good several weeks, and the best part of it: I can finally make sense of the TV broadcasts now.:)
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