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tennis can be fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: November 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Perhaps the best XSN game and more. Tennis may sometimes be crap, but not in this game. This masterpiece will blow any other tennis game away! definetley the best sports game this october of 2003. You will love yourself for picking this over
espn nba baksteball, nba live 2004, amped 2, and SSX3! Yep, it's that good!

incredible and i dont even like tennis

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game rocks. I dont even like tennis. The graphics and gameplay are awesome. A must have..
i havent tried live yet.

Best Tennis Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: November 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This has to be the best tennis game to date. The graphics are great and just the overall play is good. I definately recommend this game if your a fan or not of tennis. There's plenty of events to select from minor tournaments to grand slams. And your ranking is always going up and down. The surfaces are realistic especially on clay where you slide. As far as your character, you build it up to what you'd like their strengths and weakenesses to be. Trust this game is worth the money. The only bad thing is that there is no Andy Roddick, but other than that its great game to play.

Not quite the equal of Virtua Tennis

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 28 / 37
Date: November 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

As a major fan of Sega's Virtua Tennis and Tennis 2K2 on the Dreamcast (the latter also appearing on the PS2 as Sega Sports Tennis), I could not wait to get my hands on Power And Magic Development's newest virtual tennis game, Top Spin Tennis. A relatively unheralded console developer, PAM has done a fantastic job taking Sega's amazing formula and attempting to refine it - in fact there are aspects of Top Spin that are improvements - but despite the online capabilities of Top Spin, the gameplay itself doesn't quite match the fine-tuned perfection of Sega's efforts.

Top Spin was designed from the start to be more of a simulation than the arcade-based Virtua Tennis, and as such has more complex gameplay. Each face button on the Xbox's controller is used for a different kind of shot: A is a "safe" shot, X is a slice, B is an angled top spin shot, and Y is a lob. These shots can also be used to mix up your serves. In addition, each trigger performs a "risk" shot, which can be quite a potent weapon when mastered. The R trigger is used for power smashes, and the L trigger is used for drop shots. As a result, the game doesn't quite have the same instant pick-up-and-play accessibility of Virtua Tennis, but once some time is spent behind the controller, the shots become second nature. Top Spin also features an In The Zone meter, which is basically a power meter meant to simulate adrenaline. Play well, and the meter rises, and once full, risk shots come easier and the player performs at his/her peak. To help with this, you can have your player react in between points, celebrating a great effort or complaining at a missed opportunity.

Top Spin features several modes, including a tutorial, Exhibition for up to four players, and a mode that lets you create a Custom Tournament. Most of your single-player hours will be spent in Career Mode, in which you build your own player using a pretty robust creation system and send him or her out on tour in a quest to become number one in the world. Your player travels from continent to continent, competing in various tournaments, earning sponsorships, and visiting coaches to learn skills. This aspect of Top Spin is closer to an RPG than Virtua Tennis, as you must choose distinct strengths for your character instead of becoming a superhuman performer. It is important in Top Spin to choose skills that will cover up your weaknesses (as you cannot max out all abilities), but it is also possible to become a specialized power baseliner or a quick serve & volleyer. You earn money for match wins, which you can use to purchase more gear and to pay coaches to train you, and victories also assure a rise in rank, but should you lose a match or two, your rank will drop. The Career Mode is a very nice idea, but it doesn't have the imaginative challenges of Virtua Tennis (where you'd serve to knock over bowling pins, etc. etc.) and you can enter any tournament at any time, rather than having to wait a simulated year before retrying. When you add that Top Spin's AI can be easily exploited, the battle to become and stay number one can drag.

Visually, the game is terrific, especially the detail of the courts. Fully polygonal crowds cheer, real-life ads are everywhere in the larger arenas, and cities rise in the background. There are even playground courts ranging from in the middle of the desert to indoor arenas with snow falling outside or joggers out for some morning exercise. Player animation is very well-done, and the licensed players look strikingly lifelike, even down to signature animations (Lleyton Hewitt's serve looks just like it does on TV). However, there are no night courts, the ball boys don't chase the ball, and ambient shadows don't change during play as in Sega's games.

Top Spin's sound package isn't quite as remarkable. Matches can get very quiet with no music or crowd noise - only the grunts of the players and the smack of the rackets. It's supposed to simulate real matches, but the option to include music would have been welcome. In addition, crowd noise will suddenly appear as a roar out of nowhere, which can be jarring.

The gameplay itself is good, but doesn't quite measure up to Virtua Tennis or Tennis 2K2. New players will have trouble making risk shots, and as a result, points can be unnaturally long, especially in doubles. Sega's games did a great job allowing many types of shots with just the control stick and a single button, but it's not so easy to pull off a drop shot in Top Spin. Players will often lunge when you don't want them to, and then won't lunge when you DO want them to. Top Spin also is a lot more sensitive when it comes to player position in relation to the ball - in order to hit with power, you've got to be in exactly the right position, even after being fully trained. You'd think that a pro player could adjust, but Top Spin is a little too precise. Also, once players get the timing of the risk shots down, matches end up going far too quickly and lose a lot of the sim nature.

Still, even with these slight problems, Top Spin is quite an achievement. It looks great, plays well online or off, and has a deep Career Mode. With a couple of changes, Power And Magic could very well upset Sega's Tennis 2K2 as king of the virtual court.

Wow, tennis games can be really fun!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I like tennis and I decided to get a tennis game. In XBOX magazine, this game got a 9.0, so I decided to give it a try. The graphics are terrific and you get 16 male pro's and 16 female pro's (including Anna Kournakova :) .The gameplay is simple yet hard to master. "A" for a flat shot, "B" for a top spin shot, "X" for a slice, "Y" for a lob, left trigger for a drop shot, right trigger for a risk shot. Risk shots, while hard to execute are extrememly rewarding. The AI is basically ok... although they either put in too much effort or little effort. I was playing this guy and one set, he made like 10 diving shots, yet in the next set he stared as my risk shots whizzed by him, one top spin shot hit him in the face. Also after diving, the AI is slow to get up and after they make a diving shot, you can whiz anything right by them. Aiming is key in this game. The tennis school is lame, there i said it. It shows you instructions in small print and shows some loser doing the shots, always perfectly hitting them. I find risk shots nearly impossible to perfect. The AI always gets them... This game is by far the best tennis game i've played and big tennis fans and casual tennis fans will enjoy it.

Great Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: November 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game. It's well worth the money. The graphics are very good. Career mode is very cool, and you can play as 32 players from both genders including Pete Sampras, Jeff Blake, Leyton Hewitt, and Anna Kournikova. Controls are made very well as the A button is safe shot, B top spin, Y lob, X slice, and also drop shots, smashes and power shots. Buy this GAME!

A fun tennis game buried beneath aggravation

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 22 / 24
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

On the one hand, Top Spin can be a fun and addictive tennis game--easily the best on Xbox and, in most respects, more than a match for the classic tennis game, Virtua Tennis. On the other, Top Spin is weighed down by numerous little points of irritation and frustration. Alone, none of them would make a major difference, but when put together, they really hurt the overall product.

First, the good. Top Spin is easy to pick up--if you've ever played any console tennis game, you can get the basics down in a minute or two; and if you haven't, there's a quick and easy tutorial. The controls work well here, with each button hitting a different kind of shot (normal, slice, top spin, lob), and the triggers allowing for more difficult drop and risky shots. The graphics are great, with gorgeous stadiums and nicely animated players. And the career mode is nice, with a create-a-player feature that lets you design even the particularities of your player's face and body type. As you play in career mode, you can develop an individual set of skills for your player. You might want to serve-and-volley, or stay on the baseline and hit with power. Any type of player is easily created.

But Top Spin has too many problems. The handful of licensed (real life) players are powered-up over and above their stats, so that the difficulty level swings wildly between the made-up players you'll face and the real-life ones. Second, the game abuses the risk shot system--obviously, the game doesn't have the same timing issues as a player, and your AI opponent will frequently kill you with perfect risk shot after risk shot. Perhaps most annoyingly, given that the Xbox has a hard drive, you can't quit playing in the middle of a tournament in career mode and come back later--you have to forfeit. Probably for this reason, in career mode, you win a set at 3 games, not 6. This makes the game even more frustrating, because if you're broken by the AI, you have to immediately break-back or the set may well be over.

All told, I enjoy Top Spin, but only in small doses, and not nearly as much as I might have. It remains the best tennis game on Xbox, but if the obvious points of frustration had been solved during development, it might have simply been the best tennis game.

Best Tennis Game of all time

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

There is no other tennis game out with better graphics or more realistic game play.If you have xbox live the fun only gets better no lag and plus it has quick play matches.This game is the real deal it puts virtual tennis to shame the PS2 couldn't eve get close with the graphics alone.

Game Play 5 Stars / Load Times 1 Star

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I love the game play, the incredible graphics, and the player creator.

However, this great game is marred by *SLOW* and *ENDLESS* loading. It seems like the majority of time spent with this game is waiting for it to load. Also, the interstitials were an after thought. You see the same boring tips over and over again while you are waiting for the next segment of the game to load. And believe me, you will be doing plenty of that!

Even when you want to re-try a failed lesson or challenge, you simply can't replay it immediately. You have to wait for the whole thing to load again. AAAGH!

When you are on the court actually playing, this game is incredible. The experience is unfortunately diminished by load time issues.

I hope this is something that can be fixed via a download from XBox Live.

addition 12/2/2003...

I am adding this because my review sounded overly harsh and negative.

To sum it up, I definitely would recommend buying this game. I have played it for *many* hours since purchasing it. There are just a few annoyances that could be fixed. But overall, the game play is a solid 5 STARS.

Excellent game - very addictive!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an incredibly addictive game. I have not played any other Tennis sims so I really have nothing to compare it to. Despite that, I can tell that this game is extremely well done. The graphical detail is tremendous. Especially the player models, animations, and courts - from the monster stadiums to quaint neighborhood courts. Others have noted the long load times but I have not once noticed that myself. Even IF the load times are longer, the game is well worth it once you get in. The learning curve is not as high as I anticipated. I was able to hold my own after an evening of practice. I am now looking forward to increasing the difficulty level. The only thing that keeps the game from getting a 5 star rating in my opinion is the occasional AI brain dump. Sometimes when playing, the Console player will react to a shot by turning his/her back to your player and just sticking the racket in the air, but this is rare and does not impact the gameplay that much.

One does not have to love Tennis to enjoy this game, but if you do, it makes the game that much better. I can hit shots in this game that I could never hit on the court.

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