The rest of the game remains true to the series, affording players a meter-based serving system and four other types of shots (top spin, slice, lob, and drop).
It’s not a terrible change, but it feels both unoriginal and out of place in Virtua Tennis, a series that has managed to avoid going over-the-top in its actual tennis matches until now. When this meter is full, a player is able to trigger a cinematic and hit a faster, more powerful Super Shot, much like Mario Tennis.
The standard Virtua Tennis gameplay is back here with one significant change: While players have always been categorized by their strength (defense, ground strokes, big server), it now comes with a meter that increases every time a player accomplishes an action related to his or her strength.
Any criticism of the series must take this into account. Obviously, this is a sports franchise, and there’s only so much that can be done with the static game of tennis. After an inspired first entry in the franchise that singlehandedly reinvigorated the tennis genre, Virtua Tennis has failed to improve in any meaningful way more than a decade later. It’s strangely fitting, then, that Virtua Tennis 4 on the Playstation Vita, like the franchise, has mirrored Haas’ career path. And yet, despite a long career that has included 13 titles and an Olympic silver medal, no tennis fan can speak of Tommy Haas without mentioning his unfulfilled potential and lack of major victories. In fact, his last tournament victory happened the same year as the release of Virtua Tennis 2009, the previous game in the series, even though he didn’t make the roster.
As the only player to appear in Virtua Tennis 1-4, Tommy Haas seems to get an extra spring in his step each year Sega publishes a new iteration and shows it by having the best seasons of his career. Tommy Haas must love when a Virtua Tennis game is released.