Table tennis, better known as ping-pong, is one great game. Nearly anyone can play. Yet at its highest levels, competition is fast and furious.

Virtual Table Tennis 3D brings ping-pong to Nokia’s advanced touchscreen devices with, as the name implies, 3D imaging. This isn’t the kind of 3D you experience at a movie theatre, however; no special glasses are required. In fact, the best feature of this game isn’t 3D at all, in my opinion, but rather its sensitive touch control. You control the virtual paddle with your fingertip.

To start playing, first decide which level you want: Novice, Intermediate, or Expert. As you advance to higher levels, the ball moves faster, the angles become more difficult, and more spin is applied. At the Expert level, the ball really flies!

Next, pick your countries, since Virtual Table Tennis 3D is set up as a country-vs.-country competition. First decide which country you are playing for, selecting from a list of 10 countries: Austria, China, Czech Republic, Japan, Germany, Italy, Romania, Sweden, the U.K., or the United States.

Next, pick the country you will compete against. However, your choices may be limited. When you first play Virtual Table Tennis 3D, you can compete against only one other country. All the others are locked. Later, each time you win a game, one more country is unlocked. Win nine games, and all the countries will be unlocked. Below, you can see my first round: I opted to play for the U.S., and because I hadn’t yet won a game, I had a choice of only one unlocked opponent – Austria:

With that, you are ready to play. If you have played ping-pong, the rules are familiar. Each player gets two serves. When one player misses a shot, the other player receives a point. And the first player to score 11 points wins. If there is a 10-10 tie, then one of the players must score 2 more points to win (similar to the deuce situation in regular tennis).

Moving the paddle takes a little practice. You can slide it from left to right, switching from forehand to backhand. You can also move it up and down, placing your paddle closer or farther from the net. Serving is bit harder, but with some practice, you can time it so that you hit the ball at its highest point in the throw for a pretty fast slam. To spin the ball, double-tap the screen, and your next shot will have some spin on it. But I found it much easier to spin the ball with a kind of sideways movement of my fingertip.

Options are limited to just three. Sound can be turned on or off. Vibrate can be turned on or off. And Camera Type can be set to Fixed or Follow. In this case, Fixed means the image of the playing table does not move, while Follow means the image moves slightly, from right to left, similar to the way a television camera follows a sporting event. I found Follow a bit more fun, and made it my default setting.

Here’s a shot of the Options menu. Since each option has just two choices, you toggle the setting by tapping it once. For example, tap Sound once, and it toggles to Off; tap it again, and it toggles to On.

While I enjoyed playing Virtual Table Tennis 3D, I found it way too difficult to win a game. Because you are competing with a computer, the darned thing almost never misses a shot. It is like playing with a robot – too perfect! In fact, the only way I could score a point was by hitting the ball to either of my opponent’s far corners. Anything else, the game was able to return. This meant scoring happened only when I lost concentration and missed a shot, or when I managed to get a ball into my opponent’s far corners. As a result, while playing in Novice mode, I was able to win only 1 out of 12 games.

There are a few design issues, too. For one, there is no Exit or Quit control. So to exit the game, I had to return to the homescreen, then select Options > Show open applications, and then close the game from there. The game’s developer, Clapfoot Games, is aware of this omission and says it will be fixed in a future release of the game. For another, on some devices, the sound does not play even when switched on; this was the case on my Nokia N8 test device, so I played in silence. This is another glitch the developer told me will be fixed in a future version.

Virtual Table Tennis 3D is available on Ovi Store, and it costs $1.99 (USD). The game runs on Nokia’s new Symbian touchscreen devices: Nokia N8, Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7, and Nokia E7.