Virtual Table Tennis 3D

Summary

Having already tested a dart app this week, a ping-pong game seemed the perfect way to wrap up the week. So has the transition of table tennis to touchscreens been successful? And can Virtual Table Tennis 3D even begin to compare to the real thing? Find out all that and more in today’s review.

As much as we all love touchscreens these days, it can be a real challenge to develop a touchscreen game with good controls. Playing ping pong on a computer or console is hard enough to imagine, but can it actually work on a touchscreen? The developers of Virtual Table Tennis 3D have done a great job overall even if not everyone may think ping pong is well-suited for smartphone displays.

The masterminds behind the creation of this game took their time and paid attention to detail, managing to include all of the nuances of ping-pong playing into the game. You can, for example, smash the ball really hard if you hit when it’s high up in the air. Give your shots backspin by waiting for a special bar to fill up, then double-tapping the screen before your next stroke. These are great solutions for the controls and work perfectly well.

There are a total of three difficulty levels. The first difficulty level is recommended for beginners, especially since each level is progressively more difficult. As soon as you get to the more advanced levels, things speed up dramatically. There are basically no options except for adjusting the difficulty level, sound and vibration. You can’t pick your own ping pong rackets or set a specific amount of points. Every game is played to 11 points. Unlike Darts 3D, however, this game lacks a multiplayer mode, which could’ve have really given it a boost in the rankings.

Bottom Line: Virtual Table Tennis 3D may not have a great deal of options, but the game is the best option for playing ping-pong on your phone. So for anyone looking for a classic game of ping-pong, look no further than this game.

I’ve already briefly described the controls of Virtual Table Tennis 3D. You control the racket by swiping from left to right across the screen. To hit the ball just swipe upwards across the screen. This games requires you to respond in record time, but the controls are nevertheless perfect for a touchscreen. The whole experience is packaged in 3D graphics, which are good, but fairly basic.

Virtual Table Tennis 3D crashed once during my test. Otherwise, the game was stable, fast and without any lags.

Virtual Table Tennis 3D is available for free, but with pesky ads from the Android Market.