Articles
By Spud Gun
Published: Mar. 4, 2007 8:30 PM
Top Spin is still a popular title on the Xbox and was first released in October 2003 to rave reviews and was a big player in the XSN title range, and it soon developed somewhat of a cult following. When the XSN went the way of the dodo, fans of the game were concerned that they wouldn't see an further versions of the tennis title, but their concerns were unfounded. Publishers 2K Games and developers PAM have released Top Spin 2 on the Xbox 360, but is it worthy of the accolade 'next gen'?
Top Spin 2 contains 24 licensed professional players and 19 world venues, and the modes of play available to you are Exhibition mode, Tournament mode, Career mode, Xbox Live and Party games. 2K Games and PAM offer a tennis game that is very much in the same vein of tactics and fun that the Xbox version had, with some additional features and improvements that make it a better game to play on the 360, but it by no means heralds the arrival of tennis in a next gen format.
Exhibition mode involves playing the games professional players with their stats maxed out. It’s far from easy and seems to be very much for the seasoned player. Tournament mode allows you to add 8 professional players to a custom tournament. This is saved on the HDD so that you can continue with your tournament at any point. Party Games contains 3 games (Time Bomb, Wall Breaker and Splash Court) for 2, 3 or 4 players. These are designed to be played with others on the one console which is a nice feature, but will more than likely see little use. All these modes add depth to the game, but Career Mode is recommended for newcomers to the game.
It is in Career Mode where the bulk of the single player work is done. You begin with player generation which is substantially improved upon. Skin tone, eye colour, nose sellion, cheek structure, are just a few facial aspects that can be altered as part of the new character generation system. However, it can get a little frustrating with adjustments in one facial feature undoing something you may have spent some time creating in another facial feature. It all feels a little hit a miss. Regardless, it is good to have that level of interaction with your player.
You don’t have to go far in career mode to see the first frustration in the game, and that’s the long and frequent load times. When the game loads, and you are asked to press ‘Start’, you hit the first load screen. There are too many of them, and they crop up too often. They seem unnecessary and could have been streamlined. The career mode operates on a date based system, where you can opt to train or play in a competition for any given date. There are several tabs that you can access where you can view e-mails, buy gear, and select a coach. As you train and play, you receive e-mails from coaches keen to train you, from interested sponsors, and even from players disgruntled at their defeat at your hands. This is an intuitive system and works very well. You start with 200,000 coin (Top Spin 2’s version of money, and what you play for) to spend on gear or training. Training has also been improved upon, with a variety of ways of improving your stats, from hitting the illuminated court areas to knocking down oversized dominoes and skittles. The time or number of serves available to complete the task gets shorter as the difficulty factor increases. These training exercises do make learning the intricacies of the game more interesting than what it otherwise could have been. Your success and failure in your training tasks dictate the reward, and it is through this process that you build your players skill set. The skills that you can build up are quite diverse, and adding a star to an attribute gives the sense that your player is evolving which is very satisfying.
Playing Top Spin 2 is good fun. It’s addictive and can be rewarding once you grasp the tactics and start nailing some nice shots. Learning those tactics can be quite a chore. You would be wrong to expect a Virtua Tennis style arcade experience. The ability to put a variety of spins on the ball, with a variety of shots (top spin, side spin, safe shot and lob) in conjunction with the left and right trigger buttons puts the game firmly in the sports simulation category. The trigger shots are very difficult to master, especially in mid rally when the heat is on. The power serve is a little easier as you are not under the pressure of running into position to receive a ball, and even then a hardened gamer with the reflexes of a nervous hamster on a diet of Red Bull and coffee grounds would have trouble nailing the power shot consistently. It’s a shame as having the power shots more accessible would make it a better game.
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