Top Spin 3 (Xbox 360)

If you really, really, really dig tennis, you'll dig this. Otherwise...
7/2/2008 6:20 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Xbox 360 owners once again have it all over their PlayStation 3-playing brothers when it comes to hitting the virtual tennis courts. Last year, it was a choice between 2K Sports' simulation-style Top Spin 2 versus Sega's more arcade-style Virtua Tennis 3. This year, Atari's upcoming Smash Court Tennis 3 will try to grab the thumbs of arcade tennis fans, while 2K Sports has raised the realism bar with its Top Spin 3. The latter game takes videogame tennis to a new level, but all that realism comes at a price -- namely, a steep learning curve that might stop some players from getting the most out of the disk.

I've played the earlier versions of Top Spin, so I didn't really think it would be too hard to jump right onto the court this time around. I am a professional, after all. In quickly became apparent, however, that something was horribly wrong. My guy wouldn't hit the ball! Roger Federer was throwing the match -- and he wasn't even doing a good job of pretending to be trying to win! As it turns out, the problem was that the controls for this latest iteration of the Top Spin franchise have been completely overhauled. In previous games, it was about loading up your shot by holding down a face button and then releasing it to hit the ball. Now it's about loading up to generate appropriate power, releasing, and then hitting the face button to execute the shot. It's a bit like dealing with the pitching meters in baseball games or the shot meters in golf games, but without the benefit of, oh, actually seeing the meter that you're trying to use. This new system takes a small world of time to get used to, but it creates a game that's more intense and deeper than any tennis game to date.

In addition to using the different face buttons -- and various modifiers -- to hit different types of shots, this time around you can use a shoulder button to charge the net and the right stick to serve and hit lob and drop shots. Helping you wrap your brain and thumbs around the new controls is the "Top Spin School" tutorial mode. You won't be a world-beater when you leave the school, but you will be equipped to begin to enjoy the action. Also helping you deal with the demanding new control scheme is the game's slower pace, when compared to Top Spin 2. Players move at more of a jog than a sprint this time around. This can make things seem sluggish at times, but for the most part it's nice having a few extra milliseconds in which to set up and execute a shot.

As with most games in the sports genre, the bulk of the experience is in playing through the career mode. Fans of really detailed create-a-player features can pick a player template and go to town, editing everything from eye color and shape to nose size. Budding phrenologists could spend days tweaking the skull shape, alone, just to see if it affects play on the court. One bizarre "feature" of the player editor: Whenever you adjust anything on a female player, her skirt will ruffle up in the front like she's standing over a vent or trying to hide a squirrel. A lesser reviewer may not have mentioned this.