Tennis League VR is now available for Quest 2, bringing the full-scale courts into your headset.
Tennis League VR is marketed to "pro, fitness fanatics and casual joes," according to developers AnotheReality. It offers several modes, include a single player career mode, online multiplayer and an arcade mode, including the recently-revealed 'Droid Rush', which sees you fending off against approaching robots with tennis balls.
I jumped into the game earlier today and play through the tutorial and a match in the career mode. With any attempt to bring tennis into VR, there's one big limiting factor that any game will face – almost no one has a tennis court-sized playspace to run around in VR in. (And let's be real: if they do, they probably have access to an actual tennis court anyway)
Tennis League VR's solution is to provide you with a short-hop teleportation system via the face buttons on the Touch controllers. Primary buttons (the lower set on each controller) hop you to relevant points left or right along the baseline, whereas the secondary (top set) of buttons shoot you up closer to the net. As enemy shots approach, you can press the correct button to directionally hop towards a space from which you can return the ball back to them.
It's an interesting workaround that focuses on quick reaction times. I found a little hard to wrap my mind around at first, especially as someone who has experience running around on an actual tennis court. That said, practice makes perfect – more time with the game might see the system become second nature.
We'll need more time to assess all of the game's mechanics, but in the heat of a match, swinging and serving both felt decent, if missing that satisfying natural feedback you get from a real racquet.
We're working on our full Tennis League VR review right now, so keep an eye out for that in the next few days.
