Top Spin 2

A welcome return for the popular Tennis series.

Before EA announced that they were going to make games for the Xbox, Microsoft decided that they better start their own sports games line. There was Amped, NFL Fever, , NHL Rivals, Links and Top Spin. While none were trend setting, they were decent enough games. Sales of the games weren’t fantastic and when EA finally broke down and released games for the Xbox, Microsoft decided to abandon the sports genre, divided up their intellectual property and sold it to the highest bidder. The highest bidder for the Amped and Top Spin series was Take Two Interactive, who put those titles under their “2K Games” banner. Top Spin 2 was scheduled to be a launch title but was delayed for quality reasons.

Unfortunately Top Spin 2 still screams “launch title.” The game itself seems rather bloated and doesn’t seem to know what exactly it’s doing. The load times are unacceptable for a game that just plays tennis. During the load screens you can ‘scroll’ around the globe to see the different venues. It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t obscure the fact of the insane loading times. It would have made more sense to just play Pong during the load screens.

After you go through the load screens, you are presented a menu. You can choose from exhibition (singles or doubles), tournament (create the match type, number of human players, games per set, sets per match, number of rounds, and difficulty), career mode, party games (a whopping 3 games which require at least 2 players), and online play.

As is always the case with sports games, you’ll spend most of your time in career mode. The way career mode is presented is rather interesting but frustrating. In order to enter most tournaments you’ll have to attain a certain ranking, so in the early going you’re limited to ‘training’ mini games and “coaching” sessions. The minigames are reminiscent of Virtua Tennis; however these mini games do not give you a whole lot of information before playing the game. There was one mini game I ‘failed’ because I was not hitting from the baseline, and it would have been nice if I knew ahead of time that hitting from anywhere other than the baseline was not allowed. There’s no warning, just a “failed” and a “you hit from the baseline” message. Successfully completing a training session earns you ‘stars’ which you then use to enhance your traits such as ‘backhand’ or ‘stamina’.

You will also hire a coach during career mode. Of course when it comes to coaching you get what you pay for. Some coaches are cheap and you will not receive as big of a performance bonus. The coaches will guide you through the various shots you can make, however you’ll find that the “loading screen tips” give you better coaching than the coach themselves. Usually the coach will have a mundane exercise such as “volley with me 10 times,” which I found mind numbingly easy.

You’ll have to start off your career with some really bad tournaments in what look like local recreation courts – although they are in Japan. You’ll play unknown players with rankings as low as yours. They do play a tough game of tennis, and it also makes a lot of sense to just start with career mode rather than playing as an A-list player because you don’t have the skills in career mode that you do with Federer.

When you make shots, all of the buttons are in play. The Left trigger gives you an ‘advanced shot’ while the right trigger enables a ‘risk shot.’ The game controls do not differ from the original game very much.

The ball physics seem rather realistic, and the ball speed can vary by the type of the course you are playing on. The graphics are definitely not anything to write home about, but they aren’t horrible either. The animations of the players aren’t bad; you do feel like they are diving realistically.

The in game sound isn’t fantastic either. The ball sounds good and quite often you can tell if you’ve mis-hit the ball just by the sound. The ambiance isn’t that great however and sound during the menus gets very old very fast.

There are 11 achievements available in game for 1,000 points – and this is one of the first 2K Sports games that actually makes you earn them. You’ll have to finish career mode with over 1,000 points in order to get almost half of the points. It’s not that difficult, but it is time consuming.

Finding a match online was my most difficult problem with online play, once I found an opponent; I found the game to be an enjoyable experience. Actual game play can be fun, however there were some times that I felt my button presses did not formally register – other times I completely whiffed at a ball. If these are designed things (the whiff especially), as long as it happens sparsely, I don’t mind that. If it’s a lag issue well that’s another story, but I’ll err on the side of caution this time. The online mode is very bare bones – there are rankings, but that’s about it.

Overall, the game doesn’t reinvent Tennis, it does seem like a freshened up Top Spin, but there really isn’t anything new in this game except for the players and the create a player option. Even 2K Games seems to admit this with a price point of $39 which is $20 less than a regular Xbox 360 new release.

If you’re a fan and need to have a 360 Tennis game, then Top Spin is your choice. If you have any other tennis game (the original Top Spin, Virtua Tennis on PSP, etc), it might be worth a rental.

This review comes courtesy of our friends at Gameshark.com .