Top Spin

Realistic tennis games have slowly crept back into the world of sports gaming the last few years, no doubt due to the rousing success and acclaim of Sega's Virtua Tennis series. It's with little surprise, then, that Microsoft has gone forward with a tennis game of their own, to accompany the other XSN releases and bring a game that's perfect for Xbox Live to boot. Developed by Power and Magic (aka PAM), Top Spin is an excellent, addictive tennis game with more depth than Virtua Tennis, if not more addictive gameplay than Sega's classic. No doubt, Top Spin is an excellent game, whether you like tennis or not, and if you're looking for another great XSN game to compliment Links or NBA Inside Drive, Top Spin will fit that bill.

Top Spin has a wealth of options at your disposal, from regular singles and doubles matches, to a custom tournament for 16 people offline, and of course, full multiplayer via system link or Xbox Live and XSN, for hosting tournaments. However, the meat of the game lies in single player, especially since you can take your created career player offline online and layeth the smacketh down on the opposition. The career mode actually bears many similarities with Links 2004 - you start off at the bottom of the world ranks, and it's your job to work to the top, from the semi-pro tournaments that have maybe 50 people in attendance, all the way to the grant slam tourneys such as the US Open and Wimbledon (not the real names, though), and of course, attain the #1 ranking in the world. Along the way, you can pick up a sponsor from many real tennis outfitters such as Reebok, Prince, and Adidas, as well as boost your stats (through something they call Сmasteries') by challenging training sessions from different coaches across the world. You earn 14 mastery stars at the start, and you must divide these 14 across 4 different categories to round out your player, as well as earn skills to balance your player - or cover your ass if you suck.

The career mode is quite lengthy and will occupy a large chunk of time as you work up the rankings until you start facing the real pros like Sampras, or on the women's side, perennial loser, but perennial hottie, Anna Kournikova. There's a total of 16 pros to play as or get whooped by in Top Spin, even if they take a back seat to your own customized player when you spend all that time in career mode.

Top Spin is definitely more realistic than Virtua Tennis. The matches are much more methodical, and longer as well. There's many different shot types, like a regular return shot, a slice shot, a floater, and of course, a topspin shot. There's also something called a risk shot - using the right trigger, you get a different power meter, that when done right, will pull off a great shot that either will earn you a point, or cost you one. It is called a risk shot, after all. Actually, the risk shot is something you can never use in hours of gametime, as it really doesn't offer that much of an advantage.

Also, as you perform well, a meter in the corner of the screen fills up. This meter is known as the ITZ meter, or In The Zone. When this is filled and ITZ is flashing, your player becomes more excited and performs better than their stats, and risk shots are much more effective and easier to pull off, or so they say. Like risk shots, the ITZ meter is pretty useless, and offers little other than an occasional boost of ability to finally win a hard-earned point.

Otherwise, the gameplay in Top Spin is top notch, if a bit plodding in pace sometimes. The action is still fast-paced, but matches tend to take forever - it doesn't help that once you enter a tournament, you cannot leave it or you forfeit. When each match can take 20 minutes at a time, you're looking at spending one hour or more on one single tournament without a break. At least in Links, you can quit after each round and come back to it later - should be that way here, or accelerate the pace a bit more.

But this is nitpicking, because everything else is great. The intense games can become incredibly thrilling, especially when you get into a game of back and forth with a tough opponent, using all your tricks to save yourself or putting your opponent in a bad situation. Once you get the controls down and learn the nuances of each shot type, you can arm yourself as a dangerous player that can quickly lay the hurt down on the opposition. If you're willing to play an hour or so at once without being able to go back (it's a small thing, but annoying nonetheless, not everyone has an hour at a time to play), you will find yourself an addictive tennis game that has enough back and forth action to make both tennis fans and sports game fans happy.

However, if you come in looking for Virtua Tennis' arcade style play, you won't find it. Top Spin is much more realistic, and many of VT's tricks won't work well here. This time around, you have to learn how to use every shot in the book and actually wear an opponent down, rather than just blasting it by them. The slower pace doesn't help, so you might want to stick to Tennis 2K2 on Dreamcast or PS2 and wait to see if Hitmaker will make another version for Xbox one day rather than tackling Top Spin, unless you want to see a more accurate representation of tennis.

As you'd expect, the visual presentation of Top Spin is very strong. Highly detailed and animated players are the norm, especially the real pros, who look eerily similar to their true selves - eerily for everyone but the Russian female, anyway. Then it's A-ok. The players more around the court smoothly and have loads of animations for all the different shots - diving for the ball to make a save, running forward for a flip shot, the slow hesitation and wind up for a powerful backhand - pretty much everything you can imagine is here. Added in with huge courts that are varied in attendance - from smaller arenas for the minor tournaments, to the monstrous locales for the big tourneys, that all are full of detail and color to add a realistic touch to every game. As far as the Xbox goes, it's one of the better-looking sports games to come out of XSN.

The audio presentation is quite sharp as well. Only one licensed song is here, СGet Free' from The Vines, but otherwise, music is sparse. There's no custom soundtracks (a shame), thus every match is held in silence, other than the crowd cheering when a point is made or an outstanding shot is executed, or when the judge does his business - somewhere, John McEnroe is yelling at him just because he's the judge. The crowd is quite smart, and responds perfectly. The grunts and groans of tennis are here as well, along with great effects when the ball is floating around, just like the great effects of Links 2004. There's no announcers, other than the guy who introduces a tournament and speaks again when it's concluded, putting the focus squarely on the match at hand. In Top Spin's case, subtlety is what's at work, and it works well.