Keep control of your balls
The biggest difference between the two versions of Table Tennis is, of course, the controls and this is where the Wii should come into its own with that motion sensitive Wii Remote. You actually get three different control sets, Standard, Control Freak and Sharp Shooter.Standard is where everyone should start, just to get an idea of how to play before progressing on to the more complicated controls. Standard just uses the Wii Remote which you swing to hit the ball, simple. But the key thing here is timing your swing. Rockstar have placed masses of emphasis on swinging early and not swinging when you would in a real game of table tennis. At first this feels bloody strange and takes some getting used to but the reason why becomes apparent.
Table Tennis, this version and in real life, is all about manoeuvring your opponent out of position to deliver a killer shot. Pretty much as soon as a rally has started both players are thinking several shots ahead. So unless you’re opponent does something whacky like lob the ball for no reason, you’ll be thinking about where you’re next shot is going probably before the ball has even been hit back to you. And this is where that early swing comes in.
Swing up and to the left, the ball goes deep to the left, down and to the right, the ball goes short and to the right etc… and to do that swing you need to get it in early or your player will just play a weak defensive shot, leaving you open to attack. Starting off, the timing can be an absolute bast to get to grips with and leaves you feeling a bit disjointed from the gameplay but if you persevere you’ll soon get the hang of it and start to be able to add more weapons to your arsenal.
If you’ve ever watched Table Tennis on TV, or even if you play it in real life, you’ll see the players giving it their all on every shot. What you may not see is the huge amounts of spin that they try and put on each shot to swerve the ball’s flight even more and affect the bounce. Topspin skips the ball over the net, keeping it low off the bounce; side swerves it one way or another in flight and after the bounce and backspin floats the ball in the air and makes it sit up after the bounce…
To add spin in Table Tennis on the Wii you use the D-pad on the Wii Remote to select the spin you want. But it’s no good just holding it down all the time, you have to charge the spin up between shots… and if you combine left spine with a deep shot to the left of the table, that’ll emphasise the spin even more and that’s how you drive your opponent out of position…
Now, the more successful shots you make charging up your spins each time adds to your focus bar. This is a measure of how much ‘in the zone’ you are during the match. Fill up that focus bar by playing plenty of successful spin shots and you’ll be able to enter a focussed mode where, until your bar runs out, your shots are faster, the spins are more exaggerated and your opponent is pretty much just trying to survive the rally… they’ll be on the defensive and liable to leave you with a sitter to hammer home... unless they’ve managed to enter focussed mode too, but I’ll tell you about that in a minute.
The other two control modes are worth a mention because you’ll definitely progress to these once you’ve gotten the whole swing and spin thing under your belt. Control Freak allows you to control the position of your character whilst playing, something that in other modes is done automatically for you. In this mode you really need to be careful where you place your character because distance from the ball is critical in how much power return the ball with… and it can be damned hard!
My personal favourite is sharp shooter where you have much more control over where the ball goes on the table. You still use the Wii Remote for swinging and spin but now you use the joystick on the nunchuck to control where the ball goers when hit. You need to be careful though as too much pushing on the stick can mean you’ll aim off the table… but the Wii Remote does give you a warning vibration if you’re aiming off.
