We’ve all tried or seen tennis played on the Wii. At the time, the possibility of reproducing a sporting movement in a video game using the whole body was revolutionary, coming to be represented in films and TV series. Now thanks to virtual reality we can experience digital sports firsthand and, as then, one of the first to be digitized was tennis.
Today we talk about First Person Tennis , recently successful for Meta Quest 2 (where I tried it) with the aim of answering a single question: is it a good workout?
Training tennis in your living room presents an obvious problem: space. First Person Tennis solves this with teleportation. In practice, when your opponent serves or responds, the game will teleport you more or less close to where the ball will arrive, it will be up to you to respond. There is also a progressive mode that instead of teleporting you simulates the race to the destination, it is realistic but beware of seasickness.
You do not really run but the accuracy in interception and in the trajectory of the ball is there so, when it pours, you can train your aim without leaving home.
First Person Tennis also has a career mode where you play the role of a tennis player who earns skill points over time. You will also be able to customize his appearance of him. You will participate in a world championship in thirteen tournaments played on seven different types of surfaces with as many rebounding physics.
This makes FPT a longer-lived playmate on average than many other VR experiences. The opposing AI is not perfect and at the beginning it will (on purpose) lack many easily catchable balls to give the player an easy victory. Trust in the evolution of the enemies (and don’t skip levels like I did) because as the games go by they get better and better and will give you a hard time .
FPT gives its best especially in matches with many exchanges and many sets because once you enter the flow the game comes to life giving a total body-level experience . Always in these longer matches you will find (especially in summer) that you are burning calories because you will find yourself sweating a lot, perhaps also because of the viewer that rests on your forehead.
I am not lucky enough to have a friend with Meta Quest so I have not been able to experience multiplayer in first person. To all those who find themselves separated from their Tennis partner , however (long-distance relationships, transfers or other) I recommend this game to find digitally some of the challenges you did in person.
Last note: the graphics are not perfect, the models are a bit spartan and the animations of the audience are a bit robotic but we see that the attention of the developers of Mikori Games has been put on the physics and not the aesthetics .
First Person Tennis is also experiencing a small moment of glory in streaming thanks to the LIV integration (which allows the positioning of the streamer’s body in the virtual reality scenario) so it is not only beautiful to play, but also to watch.
https://help.twitter.com/en/twitter-for-websites-ads-info-and-privacy
You sweat, you are wrong, you try again and you win : if you are looking for an alternative way to train forehand and backhand, to play with a distant friend or to burn some calories then this game is for you.
