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I should've known better...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: April 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When a company delays the release of a game "for further development," it's never a good sign. When said game is then released with absolutely no fanfare (and no reviews on any game review sites), that's the kiss of death. It's basically the same thing as a film which wasn't screened for critics. The game screams "buy me before someone tells you that I'm bad."

I succumbed to the urge to buy, and now I have a [...]chunk of non-fun sitting in my Nintendo DS case.

Here is a brief list of the things that make enjoyment of this game difficult:

1. The graphics are beautiful, but the framerate is ghastly. The game looks choppy, and it's difficult to have any timing when the entire thing seems to be suffering from various levels of lag.

2. The game has load times. One of the most often cited reasons why Nintendo prefers cartridge based systems to cds is because cartridges don't have load times. So why does Top Spin 2 need to spend time "loading" for every match? You got me... It's a one-on-one game which is streaming from a cartridge. Any load time is unnecessary.

3. Despite having a "create-a-player" save feature, the game doesn't bother to save your language preference. So, the first thing you do every time you turn it on is choose "English." Not a big deal, but this is an easily avoidable mistake.

4. The concept of the "risk meter" is simply silly. It makes you take your eyes of the ball in order to focus on getting the risk-meter bar in the right place. (If you don't get the risk meter bar dead center, you'll miss.) The concept is useless for anything other than serves, because you can't take your eye off the ball in a game like tennis. At least, I can't... Which means, there's no drop shots in the game (because they all use the risk meter), and the computer will dominate the "In the Zone" meter because you can't hit "risk shots."

5. Returning serves is ungodly difficult. Yes, I realize that in real tennis, returning serves IS very difficult. But this is a video game. It's more fun when you actually get to play. The same thing is true for baseball games in which pitching is "realistic." Personally, I don't enjoy striking out 17 times per game. I also don't enjoy being aced 10 times per game. There's nothing wrong with dropping down the realism a notch in the name of fun.

6. The mini games aren't open immediately. Since the game has a number of features to get used to (most notably, the risk meter), this game could've benefitted a great deal from offering mini-games as practice sessions. And it would've helped kill the monotony (tennis is a monotonous game by its very nature). And it would've helped to be able to play mini-games and power up your created player before having to play your first tournament. All these things would've helped. But where are the mini games? They're under that little "locked" logo. Thanks a lot, 2K Sports...

7. I've been playing for two days now, on the easiest setting, and still have yet to break serve. (This is sort of the same complaint as it being ungodly difficult to return serves.) Yes tie-breaks are fun. Yes close games are exciting. But when every single match is decided by a tie-break, that's an indication that there's something wrong with the game.

8. (This one's more of a personal pet peeve.) Rather than replays or personal celebrations (fist pumping and the like), this game features finger pointing and (silent) trash talking. I'm not sure when, exactly, game designers decided that any character in a sports game had to be an arrogant prick, but it has become common. The value of "good sportsmanship" can be debated, but to go out of your way to program cockiness and arrogance into a game is just stupid. I don't need a computer jabbing its finger at me every time it scores a point. And I don't need my character doing the same thing in return every time I score a point.

Suffice to say, this game is nearly worthless. It's not all bad. If you happen to be so desperate for a game of tennis that you simply must have a tennis game, then a single match (decided in a tie-break, of course) is entertaining enough. But the game is too frustrating for too many reasons to really play it regularly.

Save your money. If you want a good tennis game, buy a used Dreamcast and pick up a copy of Virtua Tennis.

Top Spin 2 for the DS is trash.

Great Game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: February 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I don't agree with the other reviewers here, at all. I think this is a GREAT game...

First, of course serves can be hard to return. I think that part is very realistic - imagine trying to return a Roddick or Federer serve in real life... talk about impossible. Part of the game is having to anticipate where the person will serve the ball. It could come down the middle, on the outside, or right at you... and even more, it can come very quickly, just like in real life.

Second, like anything else, it takes practice. I sucked at first and started to regret my purchase. However, after I got the hang of it and entered into career mode, I started improving. At first, I couldn't win a game in exhibition mode playing as Roger Federer with the difficulty level set to easy. Last night I broke a service game playing against Roger Federer with the difficulty level set to hard.

Third, the trick to this game, like anything else in life, is practice. Tennis is a hard game, it involves strategy and skill. You have to know when to come to the net, when to play at the baseline, how/when to mix up your shots (a drop shot over the net when your opponent is back along the baseline), etc., etc.

Fourth, the career mode is great. I've raised my rank to 57 and I've completed three of the four level 2 training exercises (those damn inflatable things are driving me nuts). As I mentioned, this is where you learn how to play though.

Finally, I would hate it if the company (2K Sports / Indie Built / PAM / Whoever ) made the next release easier. I want the next version to be MORE difficult. People who have reviewed this game before really learning how to play have done a disservice. Sure, the graphics could be a touch better (they can seem choppy at times), however, that doesn't really detract from the game in my opinion.

If you really like tennis, I highly recommend this game!

Be a Tennis Pro

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: April 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game takes the game of tennis right to the palm of your hand. I've played "Virtual Tennis" for the GBA and this game is more realistic.

The Good Points:
1) Play against "real" tennis pros
2) Variety of shots easy to hit, one button for each shot. You can hit with FLAT, TOP SPIN, SLICE, LOB AND DROP SHOTS.
3) Graphics the best I've seen for a hand held game system.
4) "Create player" allows you to create a player in your own image. Train him and improve his skills and play on the world tour circuit.
5) Play head to head with only one card.

Negative Points:
1) Player movement a bit sluggish at times.
2) If you don't like tennis, this game may be repetative after a while.

Pretty but frustrating

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I should probably have realized that since I got this game for free when I bought my DS lite, it probably wasn't a great game.
This game is somewhat entertaining for a short time, but is also extremely frustrating. Basically, you try to play tennis against various stars in the field; you mostly use the A & B keys and the left and right buttons (which means that your hand inevitably starts to cramp up from trying to hold those down together) to hit the ball. What's most frustrating is that the game doesn't always respond to you hitting the keys. It's the most irritating thing in the world as you hold down the appropriate keys to make your character swing the racket, only to see the ball bounce past as your character just stands there and doesn't move. I was quickly reduced to shouting obscenities and epithets at the screen in response to this phenomenon.
There's no variation in game play - you do the same thing (desperately trying to make your character hit the tennis ball) on every level and in every game. The graphics are very nice and some of the backgrounds are lovely. The sound is only so-so.
This game could be made significantly better if it had some kind of an optional tutorial for users to learn which keys do what and when to push those keys. As it is, you have to flip through the little manual it comes with in order to figure out how to do things, and even then, you learn the most about gameplay by hitting random buttons. Some of the mini-games in the career section are sort of geared towards this, but for a new user, it's difficult to determine how to get into those mini-games in the first place. Also, as a non-tennis player, I was confused by a lot of the descriptions: It would be useful if it told me what the difference between a slice and a safe shot is.
Overall, this game is pretty bad, but not awful. It's at least a little entertaining for a short time, and it is very pretty; however, it is incredibly frustrating.

Worst Game Ever

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: June 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love tennis, which was the primary reason as to why I purchased this game. I should have done some more research before throwing the money down the drain. The graphics in the game are pretty dismal. You would think that the game would have better graphics considering that most games now a day have pretty decent graphics.

The horrible graphics would have been tolerable if it wasn't for the horrible performance of the game play.The game play is unimagineably slow. It is difficult to judge when the ball will arrive and the movement of the players is extremly slow as well. This really destroys the appeal of the game.

Serves are really hard to return, its impossible to get the player to move fast enough. Also the movement of the players is very abrupt, not smooth.

Given all the games and systems out there, I would recommend staying as far away from this game as possible. If you are really dying for a tennis game I would still recommend staying away from it. Wait until something better comes our or buy another system that has a better game (Virtua Tennis is pretty decent)

I really would have to say this is one of the worst games I have ever owned/played. The graphics are horrible, the performance is weak. These two factors combined make the game a royal waste of time and money.

good fun game, not supposed to be easy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

this game is very fun and the online reviews about not being able to hit the ball are so wrong. guys someone is trying to hit the ball back and make you not hit it back thats the point.

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