There’s a new contender in the highly-contested VR table tennis arena. VR Ping Pong Pro arrives this September.
Those of you well-versed in this popular sub-genre might recognize that name. This is indeed a sequel to VR Ping Pong from Merge Games and Reddoll. That game first launched on PC headsets in 2016 and came to PSVR in 2017. It was a serviceable (pun intended) table tennis sim, but the lack of multiplayer on PSVR really killed it.
For the sequel, Merge and Reddoll are promising online multiplayer. There are also eight new levels with themes including a Japanese garden and a stadium. The developers say these will have ‘photorealistic’ backgrounds and, judging from the trailer above, they’re not far off. It definitely looks like a big step up from the original game’s simplistic presentation.
Also featured in this sequel is a Tournament Mode with five difficulty levels to master. You can also challenge yourself in minigames and customize your rackets.
We gave the original game 6/10 in our review. “VR Ping Pong is a likable take on the popular sport that’s held back by its lack of multiplayer,” we said. “There’s only so much fun you can have with the AI matches and minigames and, once you’ve had it, there’s little reason to stick around.”
VR Ping Pong Pro will touch down on PSVR, Rift, Vive and Index in the next few months, then. There’s sadly no mention of a Quest version yet, though the standalone headset already has Racket Fury and will soon be getting Eleven: Table Tennis VR too. That’s quite a lot of table tennis as it is.
