Evil Avatar writes: "Being a fan of the Top Spin series, I was chomping at the bit to try the new one, Top Spin 3. After my experience with the game I found I was highly disappointed by this outing. The game certainly looks good, but looks are only skin deep. The best parts of the graphics are the characters themselves (now with increasing sweat textures!) and the actual changing of the weather as a cloud passes over or the sun comes out that you experience on the court in real time. I don't remember that being in the last game, but maybe I'm just forgetting it. The first sign of problems with the game was when you go into a match and the game is loading who knows what (characters, sweat details, highly textured balls? Who knows!). During these moving long shots of the venue you see basically a slideshow as the animations and camera movement stop and then move again. Not once during my whole play time did I see a clean opening to a match before the players are introduced. Once whatever it is actually gets loaded the game runs with no slowdown at all."
The Good
* The graphics, now with increasing sweat textures!
* Real-life tennis players look good for digital reproductions
The Bad
* New control scheme takes a while to get used to
* Massive change to the career mode is not appreciated
* Change from star system to point system for abilities
The Ugly
* When I got to the Pro level and found it was no different in concept than the Junior level
OPM: Thousands of Brits will be inspired to pick up a racket this week on the back of Andy Murray’s success at Wimbledon – but in this heat, and given our hand-eye co-co-ordination, we’ll be sticking to the virtual type. Looking to fill your week with some ace-smashing antics? Then join us in revisiting PlayStation’s finest tennis efforts…
Not really, most of those games were available on multiple platforms.
Just so happens that the PS magazine wrote the article so makes sense it would be 'Playstation's greatest games' :)
Gamepyre writes: "When Virtua Tennis 2009 first came out I was very excited about the game; I was so excited that I actually went and got it on release day.
Virtua Tennis 3 has been one of my favorite PSP games, and I could not wait to see what the 2009 Xbox 360 version of the game brought to the table. After playing the game, I was very disappointed in Virtua Tennis 2009; not because it was a bad game per say, but because it wasn't anything new from the previous release."
Another week and another episode of Distributed Failure is here for your listening pleasure. This week's "What They've Been Playing" features discussion on Top Spin 3, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Fight Night Round 4, Battlefield 1943, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, and much more! They follow that up with some gaming news including the latest update on EGM, the addition of prizes to 1 vs. 100, and the announcement of a new Mechwarrior game.
