While the courts outside are starting to get their fair Winter's share of wind and rain now, our consoles are keeping us warm thanks to Virtua Tennis 3, Sega's latest and greatest sports title.

VT was originally released in the arcades and on Dreamcast. Despite the minority status of these platforms, the game earned its place thanks to its lineup of international superstars, with trademark swing styles as well as detailed graphics. In gameplay terms, cartoon-style Mario Tennis and Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis were at least equals, and yet so vastly different from one another. What kept coins falling into VT's cabinet was not the most realistic representation of sport, but rather the hope that one could conquer its quirks and faults to become king of the pseudo grand slams, for an hour if not a day.

Virtua Tennis 2 survived a horrid PlayStation 2 conversion to remain successful on its native platforms, while the Xbox hosted second-party title Top Spin - a game whose impact on the Xbox Live community was surely not expected by even the developers at Power and Might.

While it took some time for Top Spin to reveal its potential and emerge to become one of the most popular Xbox Live games ever, Virtua Tennis 3 has at least had an established template into which the series has fallen up to this point. After spending a good deal of time will all versions of the game, we are now able to offer what we expect will be a judgement reflecting the game's ultimate status.

The Xbox and PlayStation 3 versions are virtually identical, with the glaring omission of any online mode for the PS3 version being the only significant software-based difference. It's a matter of preference but for us, we also prefer the Xbox 360's precision thumbsticks and VT3 is no exception.

Graphically, the game is top-notch and whether you prefer the Xbox or PlayStation 'look' will depend more on your connection type and display unit than anything else. The games run at a silky smooth 60 frames per second offline throughout.

The game's control system is heavily reliant on paying attention to body positioning and velocity relative to the ball's trajectory, both incoming and whither it will be rebounded from your racket strings. There is no inherent power gain in holding down the shot buttons, but neither is there any need to time your button press to your desired swing timing. Rather, you can effectively lock in your preparation with the shot button and then use the control stick to set your intended course for the resulting top spin, slice, flat or drop shot or lob.

This is a realistic approach to shot execution, though the strategic results differ significantly from real tennis. For a start, VT3 likes to keep things going, and so there are heavy restraints angle, spin and trajectory and thus, risk is almost non-existant. That's right - there are no unforced errors in Virtua Tennis 3! The closest you will get is the mostly suicidal net cord, which can be executed almost at will but with odds against you in terms of which side the ball will drop.

The impact on gameplay cannot be underestimated. In essence, VT3 becomes a game of strategic risk more than executional risk, although that is not to say it does not take skill to perform well at the game, because the foundations of a good shot remain true to the sport as mentioned above. There's nothing more satisfying than making the call to rush the net and pounce on a lofted service return, which requires high precision of your shot button timing to turn into a volley winner. The temptation is to press early, which turns your winner opportunity into a typically light and deep, slow-turning, high-bouncing volley.

The various court surfaces will have the most impact on ball behaviour, from the slow French clay to the slick grass of England, but even on grass, volleying just isn't as strong as it ought to be; unlike real tennis, your chances of hitting winners are highest at the baseline. This makes doubles play an often hilarious but ultimately numbing experience, exasperated by the ineffective lob system which is seldom available as an offensive option and is generally only a tool to turn a point that should have ended with a volley, into one that ends with a smash. Sega really wants players to hug the net, which is the only place you can get reasonably consistent, hard volleys off your racket, and the only place you will be vulnerable to the lob. But not even the computer players are that silly.

Speaking of which, it is pleasing to have the I formation used in doubles by AI opponents in this version of the game. However, there is no way to work this if you are partnered with the computer, as the game lacks any system to work out a side for each player to move to after the serve.

The next best thing, the Australian formation, where the server's partner starts on the same side as the server in order to force a dominant returner to always change the direction of the ball on its return, would at least have not required prior communication but is completely absent from the AI game. Of course, both options are possible with real effect in human doubles partnerships. The only other form of control one can have over computer partners is to cycle through Baseline, Normal and Net Play modes, with corresponding court positioning. While net play ought to be de rigeur for doubles, that pesky volley system and lack of unforced errors means it just doesn't work that way.

Xbox Live multiplayer is a mixed bag, offering a great example of spectator mode goodness with Virtua Tennis TV but producing even longer rallies than offline. Sega has chosen to even the court by eliminating lag from the out come of the game. We say eliminating lag from the outcome, not the actual experience: the result as witnessed by either player is that the ball on your screen stops in mid air after the first bounce until your opponent moves over and hits it back. In real time, both players are moving constantly, but what you see will initially make you feel cheated, and eventually make you realise the only effective strategy online is to assume your opponent is fully familiar with the game and will therefore make all the right decisions all of the time.

In other words, you can't outsmart your opponent because you can't see him, so you have little choice but play largely predictable tennis on the assumption your opponent is as well versed in the game as you, and without the chance for an unforced error you must continue until poor shot selection, rather than execution, eventually opens a space big enough for a clean winner.

The end result is very much like playing against the AI, which is also completely predictable: if it's not because of your relative court positioning, then it's because you can see where they will hit the ball according to their stance. On the PSP,

The PSP version fails to live up to the potential of the system to co-ordinate with the PS3 to alternate between the two in, for example, the career mode (containing the usual series of challenges, events and upgrades), or to transfer your progress in the training mode. It also has other hallmarks of a rush job: the game frequently crashes during or before the first rally, the score system unreliable, even changing in the middle of a point, and the player name graphic trespasses on the court and often covers the ball and your opponent, preventing you from analysing his stance to see the return, and more importantly, not letting you react to the trajectory of the ball until it has cleared the graphic (the times the graphic does disappear or become semi-opaque are often too late).

Despite this, there is still not a high enough difficulty setting in any version of the game. Unlike World Tour, the previous version of VT (also on PSP), in VT3 the mini games are both genuinely useful for learning the controls and entertaining enough to warrant much more than a once-over. Our favourite is the ten-pin bowling mode, although even here the programming is less than perfect, with the game frequently failing to wait until all the pins have fallen and scoring accordingly.

VT3 also has a comprehensive custom player option. Crucially, unlike Top Spin, the default players are so well balanced and yet so varied that the choice to invest your time into building one is unlikely to result in a solution for anything you wish you could change about what Sega has done for you. Top Spin produced genuinely unpredictable custom creations, which, coupled with unforced errors and a remarkable variety of shot options, made into the great multiplayer experience it was.

We haven't had the opportunity to test the PSP's WiFi multiplayer mode but we hope it does not suffer from the lag of World Tour. Speaking of which, Sega has fixed the game's tendancy to stall at the moment of a score change on the PSP version and the result is a much smoother experience.