Just make this the official topic as the game is coming out in like two weeks anyways.
While I love Virtua Tennis, I was kind of surprised some people were getting so hyped up about it, but now that I have played it I can confirm that I fully believe this is SEGA's best game made for 2011 (Yakuza 4 does not count, that is 2010!).
The first thing I noticed was how nice the menus were, and also how clean everything looked. Graphically my only real problems come from how some of the characters look, but the series has always had that problem, and this might be a positive for some people. I like to make ogre people too!
The world tour mode is the best in the series and one of the best I have ever seen for something like this, even though initially it looks awful, as it is basically a board game.
Let me explain though. Instead of being able to travel anywhere in the world, you have a set path to take with only a few splitting sections that eventually connect again anyways. You get a group of cards that tell you how many spaces you can take with each "Day" that passes (1 space cards, 2 space cards, 4 space cards, you get the idea). Depending on which you choose, you will land on a specific event, whether it be a minigame or a tournament, or even stuff like autograph signing and charity events. You can also land on sections where you buy new cards to use, but you can only purchase one at a time. Where this really shines though is that every time you land you become somewhat exhausted, so eventually you have to make sure you land on a hotel or some other place where you can rest, so your meter can grow again. If you are in an event and your bar begins to pass a red line, your body begins to act up and bad things can happen that make your character not play perfectly. I assume once you become fully exhausted, you have to go to a hospital and lose a bunch of days.
In every event you take, you can get stars to improve what kind of events you can go to and what kind of people will be interested in your abilities. Also, your character levels up and gets money with each event (except in charity events, where you give up money), so even if you are a bad player, you can still progress your character.
The game has truly brilliant design from just that demo... I was impressed. Everything is incredible... Everything is either perfect or so close to perfection that it does not even matter. I wish SEGA had more games this quality. It honestly might be one of the best multiplatform games this gen even.
So yeah, pretty good. 8-)
