Archive for May 6th, 2011

The players in Virtua Tennis 4 look less zombie-like than ever and the animation is as good as it’s ever been. And I’m really digging the latest campaign mode, even though my custom tenniseer ended her long tour through Asia by crashing and burning at the Melbourne tournament. We’ll do better in Europe.

But I’m not convinced by one of Virtua Tennis’ boldest and grossest innovations: sweat. You know how characters in Dragon Age get spattered with red droplets, and then they go about their business and look ridiculous? Imagine that the droplets are white. Now apply them to famous tennis players like Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, Boris Becker, and Caroline Wozniacki.

I see what Virtua Tennis is getting at, but I’m not convinced it works. The best case scenario is that these players are sweating off liberally applied sunblock. The next best case scenario is that they have buboes from some horrible plague. The next best case scenario is that they’re goddamn robots. And all of these are preferable to the first thing I thought when I saw these white droplets spattered on my tennis player’s face. I think it’s best if I just leave that to your imagination rather than actually write the Japanese term, partly because I can never remember how many K’s are in that word.

Virtua Tennis 4 is out next week and aside from the really gross sweat technology, I’m pretty well won over.

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After laying into With Fire & Sword yesterday, I found myself contemplating why I did not want to continue with the game. It’s Mount & Blade with guns. The gimmick works for Bethesda, so why doesn’t it work for Taleworlds? Unfortunately, it takes a lot more than simply having a bunch of good ideas to make a good game. You need to actually execute on those ideas and make them work within the framework you have set for yourself.

After the jump, one pace forward, ten paces back. Continue reading →

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Credit where credit is due: I’m supposed to write clever headlines for my diary entries, and instead I’m lifting this one straight out of the game. It’s the name of the course in the picture above, the one with the ferris wheel coming unhinged in the middle of a tornado ripping the boardwalk out from under my tires. I’ve got some problems with the presentation in Motorstorm, but borrowing a Pixies track isn’t one of them.

My focus so far is the single player campaign, and without much choice in how it unfolds, I haven’t had a reason to look ahead to what courses are coming up next. I did look at some of my stats though, and as I glanced at my course standings, the thumbnail for Waves of Mutilation caught my eye immediately. An offshore tornado? How could that go wrong? Sign me up!

But after the break, I’ll tell you why it’s only my second favorite course so far. Continue reading →

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