Women! - by Mr. Domino
There's women in Virtua Tennis now. That's all you need to know.
Okay, perhaps that's getting abit ahead of ourselves. I mean, so what. Zombie women shouldn't be that great of a thing to look forward to, but if you like women who play tennis, then this game features that sort of thing. Tennis2K2, the sequel to Sega Sports' incredible Virtua Tennis, has a host of new additions, but the most obvious has to be the inclusion of female players. Much to the disappointment of Anna Kournikova fans, she doesn't look as though she's appearing among Tennis2K2's 16 character roster. Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, Lindsay Davenport, Mary Pierce, and Alexandra Stevenson will have to do.
The women and men of Tennis2K2 look a bit nicer than last years, with better character models and smoother animation. The stadiums look nice, and the crowd looks a bit sharper than last year's audience. Gameplay looks to be largely unchanged, which is a good thing since that's what makes the original so great. The game now supports mixed doubles matches and addition to a revamped tournament mode in which you can create a player and challenge other players in matches to increase your rank. Unfortunately, the extent of the player creation wasn't shown as were the absent Sega-made fictional players which populated the last game.
While Tennis2K2 does not currently support on-line play, Sega has yet to rule it out completely. With the game coming out later this fall, there is still time for it to be put in, so it's not something to be completely ruled out. Sega mentioned that Tennis2K2 would be the among the first of the new Sega Sports titles to debut later this year.
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