This is one of the better tennis games I've played and arguably the best in the excellent Virtua Tennis series.

Visually, it's the best looking Virtua Tennis by far. The roster here is mostly good for the era despite missing Serena Williams. If plays like previous Virtua Tennis games with one notable addition: a Super Shot meter. Initially I was unsure if this would interfere with the balance of the game, but it's implemented in a way that makes it feel fair and is ultimately a good addition.

I really enjoyed the twist on Career Mode this time, which takes a dice roll/board game approach to progression. I was also relieved to find you could choose a set difficulty at the start. Prior Virtua Tennis game Career Modes had a single ramping difficulty that would usually lead to a frustrating difficulty spike before reaching the end. It's not without its flaws, however. It's easy to miss tournaments you want to play in and only lasts one calendar year. With a few tweaks I think this could have been really great.

Finally, it's worth noting VT4 plays very well on Vita. While most sports games struggled with frame rates and features on Vita, VT4 never feels compromised.

First off, I’m not a tennis fan. I just like playing the occasional game such as Hot Shots Tennis. I just like the competition and the strategy behind it. You need to trick the player into going where you want so you can set them up for failure (or at least I think that’s how you play tennis) I don’t know! I’m not a pro player! Secondly, Virtua Tennis 4 isn’t the best tennis game I have ever played, it’s very dull and lacks any excitement or flair. It doesn’t need to be a crazy arcade type game, but give us more than just green, two players, and a ball.

The game is very confusing to start. The career mode is pretty lame and I didn’t like it. You move around a world map with a piece and markers. You get random move cards instead of dice. Some spots are for training, some are clothing shops, tournaments, face-offs, and various other things. Every time you get into a match whether it’s for training or not your condition decreases and this apparently affects how you perform. I honestly didn’t notice a difference, or the AI was just so bad that it didn’t affect anything. This board game idea is nice, but it’s so dull. The menus look like absolute crap and are flat and lifeless. There’s no tutorial on how to play, and each move pretty much felt the same. The only one that felt different was the lob.

During a match, I felt every player played the same. You serve with a power meter and I could never figure out where my ball was going. Some sort of reticle on the ground would have been nice. I would smack the ball for 10 minutes and nothing would happen. It was so hard to trick the AI into doing what you want and it took so long. I wound up losing match after match trying to out beat the AI otherwise I was stuck in an endless volley. The matches themselves outside of swinging are boring. There’s no commentary, the characters look horrible, the pros don’t look like their real-life counterparts, and the graphics look about 5-6 years old.

I understand this is supposed to be a tennis sim, but you can still make it fun. Even after playing 10 tournaments I still didn’t unlock any new clothes, my character was taking forever to level up, and it just felt like the same thing every freaking match. It felt like it would never end. During the career mode, the stupid reps and managers would pop up with lifeless dialog that you just don’t care about. The only real way to go is multiplayer but no one is playing online at all. I just feel that the game is a huge boring mess with terrible AI and lifeless characters. The controls respond pretty well, but I didn’t feel a difference between any of the hits. The game could have been so much more. At is stands, this is the worst tennis game I have ever played. Even major tennis fans will be disappointed in this lifeless bore fest.