Virtua Tennis doubly so, for being a rare, excellent tennis game on the PC. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.īefore Sega were the owners of Relic, Sports Interactive and The Creative Assembly, their games arriving on PC felt like a strange treat. A very annoying element, but one that will hopefully be promptly patched up.Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. It was a rare occurrence, but I had a few game crashing glitches that sent me right back to the desktop. In terms of stability, things are also pretty good for the most part. VT4 is not a resource hogging monster, but it isn’t an ugly beast either. The port looks the part when cranked up to full, but also does a good job of supporting a lot of entry level hardware. In terms of visuals, the PC port of Virtua Tennis has a level of high polish.
Supporting a particular brand is one thing, but alienating a large segment of your audience is another. 360 pad support is definitely a good alternative then, but it is silly that other USB controllers aren’t supported straight out of the box as well. Fully customisable key mapping is a definite win on Sega’s part, but PC controls were never going to be friendly for a game like this. As much as I love the old fashioned mouse and keyboard for some game types, it just feels like a poor way to control a tennis game. I’d whole heartedly recommend it too, as the keyboard controls just don’t feel right. The Windows Live link to the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live domain doesn’t end with shared friends lists and online components though, as players can opt to use an Xbox 360 controller as an alternative input method. Virtua Tennis is as simple and addictive as ever In fact, the whole online segment of Virtua Tennis 4 runs fairly smoothly because of this. The whole Windows Live aspect isn’t without its disadvantages though, as it allows for easy achievement and online friends management via the Games for Windows Live client. Granted, nearly everyone and their mum has regular internet access these days, but it seems silly to force players to jump through the same DRM hoops for both physical and digital versions of the game. Those who were hoping for some casual solo tennis play without the need for a net connection will be left with disappointment by the whole ordeal. It’s not too big a deal for those already using Windows Live but, even if you have a decent internet connection, having to download and install the program if it isn’t your usual gig is pretty annoying.
If you get the game via an online store then you know the drill, but those who get a boxed copy need to connect so they can verify their copies of Virtua Tennis 4 via Games for Windows Live. The first thing worth noting is the DRM included with the game.
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