Virtua Tennis 3 - XBL Demo

[Shoju]

Well neither of us are going to convince the other. I've played VT2 for years against good players and your points are just wrong. You can only position yourself like that when you have time to do so like when your responding to a weak shot or if you've anticipated in advance as in real tennis, there is no super power shot like the risk shot. We were hitting deep balls powerfully in Top Spin and the risk shot could be used quite easily most of the time, but I'll let this point rest now.

[S0L]

Why didn't you put the difficulty slider in the demo? Played it this morning, and I thought it looked great, but trying to actually win a match was massively off putting - now I know this is set to hard I'll take another look ( yes I suck at tennis games ).

We set the demo to hard thinking people would want to replay it more. If it was too easy, you'd play it once or twice then give up. With it to hard, it sits there begging one more go :P

As always, with demos, you want to give enough to give a flavour of the game, but not enough so there is no reason to buy it. Just the fine line we have to walk.

If anything, the fact you're going back to try again kind of justifies the decision :P

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S0L
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[ezee ryder]

Well I love the game and its a essential purchase for me. Yes the demo is hard at first, as are most games when they are set to hard! The demo kept me coming back for more and re-evaluating what I was doing wrong, now I am pretty much most matches. Great demo, just wets the appetite for the main course.

[lostn]

I notice Andy Roddick's backhand in this game is a real powerful shot, something to reckon with, unlike Andy's backhand in real life, which is his biggest weakness. But I guess if Sega was going to translate everyone's strengths and weaknesses realistically, then people would be playing nothing but Federer.

[Jebus]

We set the demo to hard thinking people would want to replay it more. If it was too easy, you'd play it once or twice then give up. With it to hard, it sits there begging one more go :P

If anything, the fact you're going back to try again kind of justifies the decision :P

Without meaning any disrespect, I think you've got that wrong. With a pick up and play sports or tennis game, nobody wants to get hammered 40-0 each time, struggling to even get one point during your serve. It's a demo, people don't want an outrageously hard challenge, they want a feel for the game. By making it hard as nails you give off a negative image of the game because people can't even get a point and end up pissed off.

Unfortunately I'm not willing to shell out £30-40 to see if the easier difficulties make the game more enjoyable. Conversley if you had put the game's demo out on normal difficulty then at least if you found it too easy you know you can ramp it up. Or failing that, why not have the difficulty slider in the demo? Surely the point of normal difficultly is that it's not too easy, nor too hard. I can't fathom the thinking gone into putting a DEMO out with the hardest difficulty setting.

Further to that, why on earth is there not a blurb somewhere on the demo telling the user that this is set to the hardest difficulty and the full game has a difficulty slider, not every gamer who downloads the demo will go online to check out why it's so hard.

Surely the fact the full game has world tour modes and LIVE aspects would been enough to sell the game anyway without the need to "not give away too much" in a 2 game demo! I can't imagine someone getting the demo, winning 2-0 and going "Oh no need for me to buy it now, I've got a 2 round demo with no world tour and no live aspects"...

I was gonna buy this, I'm not now and I doubt I'm alone.

[Brats]

Well neither of us are going to convince the other. I've played VT2 for years against good players and your points are just wrong. You can only position yourself like that when you have time to do so like when your responding to a weak shot or if you've anticipated in advance as in real tennis, there is no super power shot like the risk shot. We were hitting deep balls powerfully in Top Spin and the risk shot could be used quite easily most of the time, but I'll let this point rest now.

I'm clearly not wrong and to demonstrate it here are two videos of both games.

Top Spin 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H05VY...elated&search=

Look at the point which starts around 40 seconds. The player at the top plays a deep shot back (which forces the returning shot high, which completely obliterates your incorrect points about Top Spin hitting deep balls powerfully ). The bottom player is then anticipating a cross court shot, but the other player hits a winner down the line. In VT, the bottom player would have made a spectacular (and completely unrealistic) dive and would have got this shot back in play, ending with (yet another) overhead smash.

VT3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh9M3...elated&search=

Look at the rally that starts around 2.32. The bottom player is diving around all over the place (he actually gets up at one point, immediately saves a huge smash and gets the ball bck in play. Ridiculous). Despite rushing around like a Gibbon, the bottom player actually brings the point back an only loses it due to poor shot choice (going cross court with an opponent at the net).

But even forgetting all that, which game looks the more realistic and which looks more arcadey? It's blatantly obvious to anyone who has ever played tennis before beyond a simple knock about down the local park.

[Sane]

So much complaining . Anyway the conversion by Sumo is up to the qualities we've come to expect from them and the game itself, I'll judge that by playing the full game when it's out. Not buying it because the demo is set to hard is just...silly.

[dvdmike]

We set the demo to hard thinking people would want to replay it more. If it was too easy, you'd play it once or twice then give up. With it to hard, it sits there begging one more go :P

As always, with demos, you want to give enough to give a flavour of the game, but not enough so there is no reason to buy it. Just the fine line we have to walk.

If anything, the fact you're going back to try again kind of justifies the decision :P

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S0L
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Just want to say, dispite the crap this has generated thankyou for the demo.
I will now be getting the 360 version over the AM2 Ps3 version.
Sumo's track record still stands at awesome (Carol Vorderman games not withstanding )

[Jebus]

So much complaining . Anyway the conversion by Sumo is up to the qualities we've come to expect from them and the game itself, I'll judge that by playing the full game when it's out. Not buying it because the demo is set to hard is just...silly.

I'm not complaining as such just pointing out that I probably won't buy this now, not JUST because it's hard but because it just felt like exactly the same game I've played hundreds of hours before with better graphics.

It just didn't hook me whatsoever...

[tom-nook]

I'm not complaining as such just pointing out that I probably won't buy this now, not JUST because it's hard but because it just felt like exactly the same game I've played hundreds of hours before with better graphics.

It just didn't hook me whatsoever...

I'd imagine a fair few people may be put off by the difficulty of the XBL demo. However, if the PS3 version is anything to go by then the medium setting is much more forgiving. I've played a year or so of the career mode & won 7 of the 8 tournaments I entered & I'm by no means a VT ninja!! Some of the rallies can be pretty mad when you come up against a player like Nadal....5 mins+ isn't unusual.

As you suspect it is really a case of more of the same with a bit of refinement & a next gen makeover. However, as the core gameplay is so sound I personally think that's a good thing but can understand why some may be a bit disappointed.

[MartyG]

If anything, the fact you're going back to try again kind of justifies the decision

I'll take another look but not because of the demo, only because you told us that the demo is set on hard - if anything the demo completely put me off.

By making it hard as nails you give off a negative image of the game because people can't even get a point and end up pissed off.

That's the impression the demo gave me.

[Salsa Party Animal]

Why Sharapnova face is not decent quality ? It is look like Catherine Tate to me.

[Nisa]

I can't believe people are complaining about the difficulty of this demo, I beat Nadal on my first try without much effort and I'm really not that good at any of the Virtua Tennis games. I also find it incredibly silly that people are whining about it being too arcadey when it's a port of an arcade game, exactly what were you expecting?.

The only thing that puts me off buying it is the fact that it's not a whole lot different form previous versions, online play will be the deciding factor if I pick it up or not.

Also will people drop the whole Virtua Fighter 5 not online whinge, it's getting really ****ing boring as are the whole Sega aren't making good console games anymore comments, I wouldn't be playing Phantasy Star Universe, VF5 or Sonic & the Secret Rings so much recently if that was actually true.

[kramer]

I notice Andy Roddick's backhand in this game is a real powerful shot, something to reckon with, unlike Andy's backhand in real life, which is his biggest weakness. But I guess if Sega was going to translate everyone's strengths and weaknesses realistically, then people would be playing nothing but Federer.

I used to play a lot of Top Spin on Xbox, especially doubles - and we came up against many "Double Samparases" teams, because he had 15 skill points, rather than 14 like every one else.

Our Grojean/Kuerten team usually made short-shrift of those bloody "Double Samparases"!

Some of the rallies can be pretty mad when you come up against a player like Nadal....5 mins+ isn't unusual.

Which for me, is a reason why I've always preferred Top Spin for online competitive play. The rallies in VT have always been highly unrealistic in terms of mens tennis. Mens tennis is dominated by the serve, not 5+ minute rallies.

At least Top Spin is a bit more realistic as you have opportunites to kill the point quick, as in proper tennis or ""Wimbledon" as us Brits usually call it!

[Grandmaster]

Interesting to do a technical comparison between this and Top Spin 2. VT3 is 60fps at 1080p. Top Spin 2 was 30fps at 720p.

Something doesn't compute there.

Top Spin 2 was developed on a non-final development kit. When I saw it at E3 2005, it looked pretty much complete to me and it was pretty much the only game that did. Hardware was far from final then - indeed, the rumour is that Need for Speed Most Wanted was demoed on an overclocked dev kit!

I'm enjoying the demo, and I can play it at native 1080p via VGA on my Dell 2405FPW (I also have an HDCP stripper so can play retail PS3 via DVI on the same monitor, plus PS3 debugs units are HDCP free any way). Smooth as silk, although it appears that the frame rate drops to 30fps on sections of the close-up shots of the players.

Was also interested to see the Def Jam Icon demo running at 1080p on both systems - although there's so little actual gameplay in that demo I've still got no idea if it's any good or not.