Top Spin 2

Thursday, 27 December 2007 00:00

Once again, I submit myself to the torture that is a tennis game. The torture? The fact that I am so utterly tripe at them. Of all sports games, I'm just not that good at tennis games and Top Spin 2 re-confirmed that fact for me.

Starting up the game and watching the rolling demo, I was quite impressed, 'hmm, next-gen tennis' I thought ... nope, still crap at it. I tried and tried, played loads of doubles and singles exhibitions and just couldn't win, so you can imagine how far I got in the tournaments...

It's a nice looking game with smooth animation and the ability to choose a gesture after scoring or missing shots was a nice touch, but in all fairness, there wasn't really that much to the game. Once you've had a practise in the exhibition matches and played a few tournaments, you're not left with much else to do. There's the online side of things where you can play 2 or 4 player games and even co-op and the create-a-player option that should keep you happy for five minutes, but I don't think tennis games have that much of a long-lasting appeal. I'm not saying that because I'm crap at them and I've played TS2 a lot, I just feel that it's a novelty that wears off fairly quickly and as much as I'd like it to be true, I think all tennis games aren't that fun for very long.

Career mode starts off with a sponsorship with Wilson and some cash, you need to use that cash for your training. Obviously, the better you do, the higher your stats will go, but I have to say, paying for your own training sucks. To get the money back, you need to play in tournaments and win in order to pay for more lessons that will boost your skills, only receiving one star per training session will mean a slower progress. As you might expect, some are easy, some are more difficult, but it's all part of getting you to a status where you're able to play at a decent standard and can hit a ball with a certain degree of control.

It's nice to play in courts all over the world, but let's be honest here, it's not exactly a new concept and I'm afraid that Top Spin 2 doesn't really offer the seasoned gamer what could be considered new. It's nicely presented with some great graphics, the likeness of the players is decent and even their mannerisms are there, if only I didn't just stand there whilst frantically hitting the button to return a shot. More than once I found myself trying to move and return a shot, only to find I would just stand there and do nothing, if I wasn't using a wired pad, I could have blamed low battery power.

Sound is, as I've said before, just your standard affair with the usual umpire announcements and ball bouncing thuds with a half-decent soundtrack. Although there are most of the top tennis stars to choose from and plenty of places to play at, there just seems a slight lack of gameplay that spoilt the enjoyment for me and I don't want to appear as if I'm completely negative and totally against this game, I can't find anything more to say about it other than it's another tennis game with better graphics.

Sorry to cut short what I wanted to be a fairly lengthy review, but I can't think of anymore to say. If you're into tennis games and want to play as your favourite player, go for it as there are 24 of the tops names in there. It can be fun on your own for a while and a laugh in multiplayer. You can spend as much time as you like trying to get the create-a-player to look as close to you as possible, but unless you're quite freaky looking, he'll just look the same due to major changes needed for him to look remotely different.

It's kinda fun for a while and true tennis fans will like it, the controls let it down a bit due to how easy it is to get confused over which trigger and button you need to do an under slicing spin shot or something.

7.5