It's been a long wait
When Top Spin arrived on Xbox in 2003 a legion of new tennis fans were born. The game was innovative, fast-paced, great fun, and brought together the technical elements of tennis alongside the intensive gameplay that’s synonymous with this ‘middle class’ sport.
Online, and offline Top Spin was almost perfect, with it’s responsive control system, arcade feel and the excellent ‘risk shot’, it was a superb predecessor to the likes of Virtua Tennis.
Fans have be waiting a long time for Top Spin 2, we’re not sure why. Whilst Top Spin 2 does have a few new features and a couple of tweaks here and there, it’s essentially the same game.
The career mode is where you’ll start your journey through the ranks, in a bid to be the World’s number one. The first step will be to create your player. All of the normal customisable options are available, including an impressive, self indulgent, facial and physical menu where you can tweak everything from your nose size to your weight. I’ve never been one for spending excessive amounts of time in building the look of a character, but, for online play in particular, it gives you an individual style that will make you stand out amongst those players who’ve leaped straight into the game with a standard character model.
The familiar brand names, which are becoming more and more prominent in recent games, are also here, enabling you to kit your player in the latest tennis fashions from the likes of Nike, Adidas, and Lacoste. Whilst some people look on this as an intrusion into gaming, I feel the incorporation of such brands just adds to the realism of the game, although the inclusion of Fred Perry would have been nice.
You’ll begin at the bottom of the rankings and need to build up your skills in able to progress through tournaments. You won’t be able to enter many competitions until your skill levels have been boosted, initially this will take the form of training before matches.
This is where you’ll see the first change from the original Top Spin. Whilst training will still see you attempting to lob, slice and serve the ball into specific areas of the court, you’ll also see more variation in the type of training games. One training game will even see you trying to knocking down dominoes.
