There's certainly a subtlety to what's capable with the motion control, and it smartly recognizes driven forehands, sliced backhands and smashes amongst other shots. And so, disappointingly, playing this early version of Virtua Tennis 4 isn't dissimilar to Nintendo's approach to the sport in Wii Sports. With control restricted to the Move wand itself, the player's footwork around the court is left to the computer's whim, leaving them free to concentrate on the art of swinging wild and furious. The game beneath all this is also familiar, though from the brief demonstration available at Sony's Gamescom preview event it's hard to gauge too much. That much is clear from the visual style alone, and beneath the shock and awe of the 3D presentation there's enough evidence to prove that this is from the company that brought blue skies to gaming, it's lines bold and its palette equally so.
There's even room for the staunch traditionalists who baulk at motion control and prohibitively expensive 3D technology Virtua Tennis 4 is the first installment proper in a much adored albeit increasingly stale series in some time, and to mark the occasion SEGA's got its original team back in Japan on the job.
