Introduction

I’ve always been a massive fan of Virtua Tennis 1 & 2 for my faithful old Dreamcast and the lack of tennis games for the Xbox in its first 6 months of life here in Australia was a bit disappointing. Luckily for us Microids was working on Tennis Masters Series 2003 and now that it’s released Xbox tennis fans should be happy right?

Gameplay

The controls in TMS 2003 are nice and easy. Move around with the left stick which you also use to aim your shots. A,B,X & Y all do different types of serves which is pretty cool and can throw an opponent off if used strategically. You also get 4 different types of shots that you can play, power topspin, slice, lob and normal topspin. The left and right triggers cycles through the different doubles strategies.

Having the 4 different shot styles is good and allows for a lot of strategy as you can power big baseline topspinners or rush up to the net and try and lightly slice one down cross court. There’s heaps off different shot combinations as a result of this lifts the game above the ‘arcade style’ smash and hope sort of gameplay. A few times when the computer was rushing the net, I would lob the ball up over them for a couple of cheap points, but the computer then started doing this to me! The computer A.I certainly has some good points like that but on other areas seemed to be a little lacking and a few times would just stand there and let the occasional shot just whistle by.

The game options are your normal one off exhibition match and the ‘Masters Series’ where you play through the nine Masters Series Tournaments to qualify for the Tennis Masters Cup. Naturally you can play an exhibition match in singles or doubles modes and with 4 people it can be a lot of fun! There are 67 different player characters that you can choose from with their own levels of stamina, speed, strength and player abilities. To make it easier to choose a player Microids have nicely grouped them into three categories, Power Hitter, Baseliner and Net Rusher. There are plenty of different players to pick from but none of them look like or are named after real tennis players.

TMS 2003 is pretty fun to play but also gets hard at times mostly because you really have to stay on your toes. Don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge and games that are too easy get boring very fast, but you really have to concentrate a lot while playing this game because if you lose concentration you will find yourself losing games pretty quickly. On a number of occasions I was 2 or 3 games up to stop for a break, get back into it and as I had other things on my mind I found the computer catching up and forcing me into tie breakers! Basically it’s just good to see that the game, even on easy, isn’t a walkover and will present you with a good challenge.

Graphics

The graphics in TMS 2002 do the job nicely. The stadiums are nicely put together and the crowd looks good too. There’s nice touches such as the shadows, the lighting effects and also your player, when playing on clay, leaves footprints that stay there until the end of the game. Unfortunately the player models are a bit hit and miss, some of them look great with good facial features but some of them look a bit rushed with shoulders that look too broad or goofy looks on their faces, but this of course is only noticeable in the replays and close-ups, during the game its not an issue at all.

The player animations are for the most part, pretty smooth but this would be one of the main areas where VT is still the leader. There seems to be some missing frames of animation as when you go to play a particular shot it just jumps to that animation without a transition. Mostly the animations work well but you can’t help but notice a few things during a game that don’t look as well as perhaps they should. The players look good when running and even perform dives when reaching for the ball so it’s easy to see that the developers obviously played heaps of VT themselves. It would have been nice to see the player animations finished off a bit better and some more features like the lines people dodging when a ball comes flying at them as they don’t move at all.

Audio

The sound consists of lots of tennis ball hitting tennis racquet sounds which all sound ok to me. The commentator does his job well too but the main thing with the sound that I liked was the crowd noise. Rip in a big serve or when rallies start going the crowd starts to murmur as the get more and more excited and naturally they clap and applaud at the end of point. The crowd noise really is excellent and adds to the immersion factor quite a lot! The menus have some snappy music, but there’s no music in the actual game itself. I probably would have turned it right down anyway.

Multiplayer

Of course playing most sports games with friends usually enhances the experience and TMS 2003 is no exception. With the option for singles and doubles matches you can have up to 4 people all on the screen at once and it is heaps of fun. Even though TMS has its share of flaws, with 4 mates it’s action packed and you will really enjoy it. We played a four player game and a mate and I were 4 games up on our other friends and due to a lack of attention or perhaps they lifted, they came back to level it at 4 games all which we eventually won 6-4 and it was very exciting! There was plenty of abuse flying around from both sides as winners were slammed down the line or easy shots were missed!