Review by George Bailey
Oh, we've come a long way from Pong! That pioneering game that launched a whole new genre of gaming, the video game. Just three squares on a TV and you were in control of it. When I first saw it I thought it was amazing! And so did everybody else at the time. Now we have a remarkable extension of it, Top Spin from Microsoft Game Studios and it brings back that original look and experience of something novel and amazing. Plus, it adds the added bonus of online play with other people from all over the world in tournaments. Who knew ages ago when that little blip was on our TVs it would evolve into this?
What All You Get to Do
From simple exhibition one on one game, to playing via system link or Xbox Live, to a custom tournament mode where you build your own player and advance through the ranks to be the number one player in the world, this game offers an amazing about things to do.
Top Spin features four major playing areas, Exhibition, Custom Tournament, Career Mode, and Multiplayer. In Exhibition you pick a player to control and Xbox controls the other (in multiplayer your buddy takes the other player) and play a game in any arena in the world. Custom Tournament is similar Exhibition, only you play against other players, either yourself against the A.I. controlled players or you and your friends against the A.I. players.
My favorite is the Career mode where you design your player's attributes, from body type and size, to clothes, even down to the eye color. Amazing! Then you take your player and start out on the bottle of world rankings and work your way to the top. You start out traveling the world playing the smaller matches to win earnings to pay for the coaching that improves your skills. You are allotted 14 stars to each of 4 areas to improve on: Serve, Forehand, Backhand, and Volley. The early starting out matches in Career Mode can get monotonous in the early starting as your opponents are bit on the dumb and slow side. But, the difficulty soon ramps up till you get to the majors and you are playing against people that are darn near super human!
Multiplayer is available through system link or Xbox live and you can play all of the modes above on each, either single player or doubles.
How it Plays
Top Spins plays very well and naturally. It's very immediate so if you want to jump quickly into playing when you first insert the disc you can play an exhibition match against Anna Kournikova, or any of the major tennis stars. The controls are cleverly laid out on the Xbox's controller so you are rarely in for a missed shot, fumbling around to find the right button to hit a ball with more backspin or a lob. This set-up makes it very easy to access the different variations ground strokes. You get your safest shot pressing the A button and I find I use it all the time.
How It Looks
Top Spin excels graphically in three areas: realistic player movement, lighting effects and detail. The player movement from diving for a return to jumping for an overhead smash is very realistically presented. When running and sliding on a clay court your player will leave skid marks and kick up dust. The ball physics are like watching the real thing in action, although, I've read some reviews saying that the ball bounces the same no matter what surface it's bouncing off of. Having never played the game I can't vouch for this but is sure looks real enough for me.
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The lighting is really wonderful, with self-shadowing on the players. It's really impressive to see a player moving in out of a shadowed area and see the light and shadows change when falling on them. The indoor lighting is very realistic with lens flare and nice cross shadowing.
The graphical details are rich with all the arenas having a unique look and feel to them. Lots of little details are seen throughout from the realistic texturing to the with company logos placed about.
Sound
The sounds effects, from hitting the ball to hearing it bounce, the scuffling of sneakers on the court, to the roar of the crowd is very realistically done with lots of echo, which greatly adds to the ambience of the game. Occasionally a heckler will yell out and the crowd will go "aw" when a particularly good shot succeeds. You actually feel like you are playing in an arena with the reverb of the sounds effects. The sound of the ball hitting the court differs from the different surfaces you play on and even the type of arena you're playing in.
It's Not Without It's Blemishes
Top Spin's flaws are few but worth mentioning. One is the system for making risk shots. You have to tap the R button and let a line fall in the middle of a small, pop-up bar chart. Getting that line in the middle is tough. The line flies up way too fast to get in the middle each time. You use this same procedure (L button instead) for a drop shot, which is equally hard to do. From what I've heard, the drop shot is one of the easier shots in tennis. Too bad it's not here.
Another matter is the viewing angles you get. There is just two. It's either behind your back or at an angle far away. Behind your back is not really all that bad and I play the game mostly in this view, but the far angle view has several issues with it. First of all, it's not too bad when your player is placed at the bottom of the screen, but for some reason you don't always get that look-it shifts back and forth during the course of a match and there's no way to change it to the position you might prefer. Fortunately this does not happen in the other view.
There is a Tennis School mode for learning drop volleys, serving and so but it seems a bit rushed compared to the rest of the game. For example, I would like to spend more time practicing my serve, but they rush you though it so you can't spend as much time as you might like. The only way to really learn it is on the court against another opponent.
Overall
Top Spin is simply one of the best sports simulations out. It's realistic enough but with sufficient arcade features to make it fun. It offers a very slick and polished presentation with superb graphics and sound, excellent player design features, realistic play and ball physics, multiplayer and Xbox Live support. It also offers unlimited replay value in either solo against the Xbox or Xbox Live against people from around the world.
4.5/5
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