Racket Club

Racket Club

Skybird Dec 19, 2023 @ 6:27am
Superb sports game...
... that is ideally designed for in-living-room-VR. I play it on Quest 3, though (but I do not like the Discord thing).

The racket-hits-ball game principle is featured in quite some good games in VR, namely Eleven, Racket NX, First Person Tennis, Pickleball One, and Racket Club VR >>EASILY<< ranks amongst these. The feel of racket and ball physics is excellent, the flow of the game is outstanding, you suffer from this "just one more round" symptom that marks truly addictive gameplay and can easily break your watch by making it work in overtime . LOL

Very few things only I can suggest to consider to add or change, these four being the most important on my mind:

1. The scoring, the idea of charging up the score the longer the running exchange lasts, is good, and I like it, however, I also appreciate much the old traditional scoring of always one point per score, it could usefully and joyfully extend the match, and sometimes I feel I react with mild anger when being in clear lead after having collected one-point scores before in severla small games - and then have just one slip in my play and the opponent catches up again or even overtakes me and wins. It feels like getting betrayed. I would suggest, at least for single player mode, to allow an option in settings to choose between both scoring modes.

2. I often, even more so in single player, just wish to play ball and do not care for scores and standings at all. I would appreciate if against the AI I could just have a setup for endless playing, like you have it by default in Eleven, the balls gets played and served as long as player does not actively interrupt it. No breaks from scores indicating a match win and launching a new match. Really, single players do not need that. In real life games like this, humans also often just trade balls for fun, without counting. Its preferred again, since tastes are different, if this would not become a new mandatory settingt, but an option in the settings.

3, A more direct control of the skill level of the AI bot I play against in training would be nice. Again the way Eleven does it is on my mind, a percentage setting. Or a 10 or 50 skill point scale - you get the idea. Or you distrubute skill points on several AI opponent categories: backhand, forehand, slice, topspin, serve, stopball - that would allow to design a training program/profile enabling you to train specific things. Such profiles could be saved.

4. Since leg movement is not yet correctly tracked in VR yet (even not after the Quest 3 recent update doing something in this regard), sometimes the avatars make utmost GROTESQUE distortions and simply stand there, and give the general impression the player must not move at all in this game, thats why I read or hear a few comments like that it is a broken game with the idea of being a "standing simulator". If you play it yourself however you soon realise that you are anything but motionless in this sports, and hip-hop around a very lot, and will shed sweat! I would consider an option cutting off the legs for visible avatars, and instead have the upper body and arms hovering in the air, moving around more correctly, better reflecting the positioning work the player controlling the avatar is doing.

One of the best VR games and sports games since autumn 2017 when I got into VR!

P.S.

5. Having not 1 but 3 training bots - for 2v2...!? ;)

6. Having the option to start a youtube music stream like in Golf+...!?
Last edited by Skybird; Dec 19, 2023 @ 7:04am