Top Spin 3 (Wii)

2K Sports tries to lob and smash its way into the hearts of tennis fans.
7/2/2008 6:20 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

I've been digging the Wii of late, largely thanks to the folks at 2K Sports. When I'm not working on my virtual hula-hooping and competitive yoga in Wii Fit, I'm cranking on 2K's MLB 2K8, the first game to do baseball right on the Wii. That game gave me a lot of faith that 2K's Top Spin 3 would follow suit for tennis. While the game does a reasonable job of putting you on the court, it doesn't have the depth you've come to expect from top sports titles.

Tennis is nothing new for Wii owners; the system shipped with a tennis game as part of Wii Sports, and if you'd always dreamed of seeing cute, Mii versions of you and your friends swinging away at doubles tennis, you were in heaven. Sega Superstars Tennis was a deeper take on the game, but because you were playing as characters from Sega's roster of characters -- complete with funky power-ups -- the game still wasn't something the serious tennis fan could get too excited about. Top Spin 3 is as close as gamers can now get to a real tennis sim on the Wii.

It's a Wii game, though, so it isn't going to be as deep or as pretty-looking as its PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 brothers. That much should be obvious going in. What isn't so obvious is whether or not the Wii's motion controls work and if this game does a better job than Wii Sports at nailing down the action on the court. While I eventually got used to the controls, it took some doing and the game didn't help too much in the hand-holding department. While the PS3 and 360 games both include a very helpful "Top Spin School" mode that teaches the nuances of the game, there's nothing like that in the Wii version. The "tutorial mode" is really just a text-based instruction manual with some clunky animations thrown in.

The game is played with both the remote and the Nunchuk. Period. Unlike Sega Superstars which gave you three different controller options -- including two that used the remote by itself -- here, you have no choice but to use both hands. The 'chuk is used for player movement, ball movement, and some shot modification while the remote is used to hit the ball.

To its credit, the game forces you to actually swing the remote -- unlike Wii Sports, where you could get away with just flicking your wrist. This nod towards greater realism, though, isn't without its problems. First off, the cord connecting the Nunchuk to the remote is just too short. You will find yourself jerking the cord very tightly as you swing. I never managed to actually yank it out -- kudos to Nintendo for developing a strong connector port -- but the stretching does distract from the action -- I lost more than a few points because of it.

Also distracting is the odd motions required for some of the shots. The game does its best to make you simulate actual swings, so a top spin shot starts with the remote low in back of you ends with it up in front, for instance. The nod to realism is nice, but it's not nice getting whacked in the face every once in a while by the controller cord. It's cool to be able to put some extra zip on the ball, but doing so means looking like a bad lounge singer with subpar microphone-twirling skills.