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jp's Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition (VITA)

[October 4, 2019 06:12:25 PM]

I started out thinking I'd play a bit and then move on. Then I decided that I'd finish the world tour. Then I thought I'd play a bit more...then, I'd try out some of the mini-games. And on it went.

At this point the game is old - but I really enjoyed how it mixed in real-life (former?) tennis stars with "invited players" (other online players) and mixed things up a bit. Yes, it's weird to trounce superstars but it's a fun game I found myself enjoying more the more I played. I guess it had been a while since I'd played a tennis game or even a Virtua Tennis title.

As a matter of national pride I was especially excited to see that one of the international tennis stars was Fernando Gonzalez! He retired in 2012 (just after the game launched) and I think he's Chile's 2nd best ever tennis player. I was super chuffed to see him in the game which is hard to explain to people from countries used to having a lot of sports super stars. :-)

The world tour mode was interesting - it was structured like a boardgame. Each turn you get a ticket (for a hand of 3, thought you can buy extras) and then you travel around trying to land in different things that will raise your ranking so that you qualify for different tournaments along the way. Due to a UI issue I would often miss a bunch of tournaments - and didn't end up doing all that well in the grand overall scheme of things. This is weird because everything I did play, I won...so there was a bit of dissonance there. However, I thought it was interesting that the tour included things beyond just matches. You could participate in mini-games, but also spend money/earn money by donating to charity, doing press ops, and things of that nature. It's pretty clear that becoming a tennis superstar (according to the game) has a lot to do with all the stuff you do outside of playing the actual game.

The game does not have the ATP license and, you can't even tell. For me at least, the game is just as interesting without all the branding. It shows, I guess, how dependent we've become on the idea that different brands really matter? Because they add/contribute...uh..some sense of authenticity? I'm not sure really. I guess there are different brands that can "do" different things, but I'm not sure this game would have been any better had the ranking system been labelled ATP or not.