One of my favorite sports is Ping Pong, it’s a fun and addicting sport that doesn’t require a ton of energy when you play casually. And it’s also a perfect VR sport, because it’s so simple it can be easily adapted to VR, and since the PSVR’s launch we’ve received 2 ping pong titles. Racket Fury and Ping Pong VR, and the better of the two was Racket Fury. But the publisher of Ping Pong VR isn’t done with the sport yet, and announced VR Ping Pong Pro for the PSVR. I’m always up to playing Ping Pong in VR, so when this was announced I was excited and interested to see where they would take the sport next. So, is VR Ping Pong Pro any good?
VR Ping Pong Pro is a PSVR game that lets you play several different modes in a variety of unique environments. When you start the game you are greeted with a tutorial that shows you how to adjust the table and racket to your liking, and then you are put into the main menu which is clean and has a nice song playing in the background. In the menu you’ll be able to change the skins for your paddle and ball, select from a wide variety of different game modes, and access all of the game settings.
For the normal single player ping pong there are multiple different environments to choose from which are each drastically different from each other, and are surprisingly detailed. Though the visuals are pretty blurry, so it’s not as impressive as it could be. The AI I found to be hit or miss while playing. Sometimes it would work well, and sometimes it was really stupid. One thing I do like about the AI is that you can set the difficulty before fighting them, which is a nice option.
On top of the standard ping pong game there are 5 special arcade mini-games which include, Bowling, Hit The Point, Broken, Goal, and Wall. These mini-games were a great addition and most of them were actually pretty addicting.
And finally there are multiplayer modes in the game. Which are a championship event and just a regular mode. But sadly I wasn’t able to test out the multiplayer because nobody was online even during launch week. But from footage I saw the frame rate was low and it didn’t look very playable.
My biggest issue with the game is the physics. Sometimes I’ll be playing and the game will work perfectly fine, and other times it’s frustrating. This is because of the ball physics, sometimes I would hit it in one direction and it would go another. But more often what would happen is the ball would get hit harder or softer than I intended it to, the sensitivity isn’t quite right.
One other issue I have is that the hit box for the table itself wasn’t perfect. On the edges of the table the ball would go straight through it. It’s not a major issue, but it’s something that I hope the developers can patch soon.
So Overall, VR Ping Pong Pro is ok. This game has the potential to be the best PSVR ping pong game, but the physics just need to be fixed in order for it to be! The content that is in here is great, besides the multiplayer, but just needs a few patches to be in a recommendable state. If you’re interested in this game, at least wait for the game to get fixed, and maybe a price drop.
