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IGN Review of Top Spin 4
Replicating the cut-and-thrust thrill of bat and ball games has been the wanton obsession of video gaming since the halcyon days of Pong. Apparently, there's clearly nothing in the world more exciting than a ball being hit backwards and forwards across a net, and occasionally missing. Tennis games are quite good at that – after all, it doesn't take much imagination to figure out the physics involved. If they could do it in 1972, they can do it in 2011.
But there's more to tennis than the basics of the game. The real thrill of professional tennis is the edge-of-seat excitement of witnessing the skilful precision of two top-flight athletes reacting to things that haven't even happened yet. The excitement rides in on those nail-biting final points, the nervous energy of the crowd in the stadium and the physical endurance that comes with hard-fought battles for precious title points.
And that's something no tennis game has ever quite managed to master. There's plenty of joy to be mined from the arcade exuberance of Sega's Virtua Tennis or even the wrist-wrecking simplicity of Wii Sports Tennis. But nothing quite compares to the atmosphere of a US Open final, in its last game in its last set, as a season's work comes down to one split second of point play.
Three Top Spin titles have tried and failed to match that mood. The basics of play work fine, but by 2008's Top Spin 3, the series had mired itself in over-complex control systems and overzealous gameplay touches. It was a nice effort, and it rewarded long hours of practice mastering its nuances, but it didn't quite work.
So the emphasis in the franchise's fourth part is on paring that experience back a touch, and focussing on slightly grander details to make the match play all the more exciting. The game's camera defaults to the style of a TV broadcast, complete with slow motion replays and locker room pre-game atmosphere shots, and it really can't be underestimated how much this sells the sense of spectacle. The simple act of suggesting the game you're playing is worthy of TV broadcast ups the ante just enough to provide a base for a much more focused style of gameplay.
In that arena, Top Spin 4 still rewards practice. There are more than trophies and achievements to be earned in the game's Top Spin Academy – it's a smart introduction to the new control system on offer. The learning curve is steep at first, and on-screen helpers rather aggressively chastise you for button-mashing panic as you start in the deep end of player control.
But pretty soon its control system – in which basic shot types, flat, slice, lob, and top spin, are assigned to the four coloured buttons – starts to feel more comfortable, and you're able to start attempting a couple of the modifiers on offer via the shoulder buttons. There are two basic types of shot play – control and power shots – and which you use is defined by how you choose to play a point.
What's more, the academy imparts strategy suggestions that come very close to mimicking the real game: you can choose to defend or attack, serve and volley or work on precise takedowns, and the game will teach you – both in these training sessions and proper match play – how and when to execute what you've learnt.
Combined with one of the most extensive career modes ever seen in a tennis videogame, the real sense of career progression as you level a character up does start to make it feel like you're really on the tour. Top Spin 4's extensive character creation tool - which through strange happenstance resulted in an uncanny Charlie Sheen lookalike when we played around with it – lets you define the look of a player right down to the distance between his eyes.
Its flexibility allows the game to generate a wealth of generic pro players to tour with as you make your way up through the minor tournaments that kick off your career, and because they're all defined by the same variable stats you are, you'll learn their individual strategies and how to take them down as you meet them more than once in various scuffles.
Of course, the real excitement comes when you get to the majors and slams, and you come face to face with some of the greatest players on the tour today. It's credit to the journey it takes to get there that facing Nadal or Federer for the first time begins with a real sense of anticipation. You can hop into a quick play with them – or, of course, masters Sampras and Agassi – any time you like, but the pacing of the game's career mode makes waiting for that first encounter there all the more rewarding.
The player roster continues to impress – beyond the four already mentioned you'll come up against the likes of Novak Djokoviæ, Serena Williams, Andy Murray and Caroline Wozniacki to name a few, and masters like Boris Becker, Bjorn Borg and Ivan Lendl are also ready and waiting. Top Spin 4 wisely replicates their playing style as closely as possible, further adding to the excitement of facing them and ensuring you're kept on your toes when you start competing at this level.
The game features a handful of fully licensed major arenas, with versions of Roland Garros, and the US and Australian opens, as well as the O2 Arena for the ATP World Tour Finals. But cracks start to show with disappointing omissions like Wimbledon – a grass court Dublin Open rather distracts from effect Top Spin 4 goes to great lengths to build.
©2011-03-17, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
But there's more to tennis than the basics of the game. The real thrill of professional tennis is the edge-of-seat excitement of witnessing the skilful precision of two top-flight athletes reacting to things that haven't even happened yet. The excitement rides in on those nail-biting final points, the nervous energy of the crowd in the stadium and the physical endurance that comes with hard-fought battles for precious title points.
And that's something no tennis game has ever quite managed to master. There's plenty of joy to be mined from the arcade exuberance of Sega's Virtua Tennis or even the wrist-wrecking simplicity of Wii Sports Tennis. But nothing quite compares to the atmosphere of a US Open final, in its last game in its last set, as a season's work comes down to one split second of point play.
Three Top Spin titles have tried and failed to match that mood. The basics of play work fine, but by 2008's Top Spin 3, the series had mired itself in over-complex control systems and overzealous gameplay touches. It was a nice effort, and it rewarded long hours of practice mastering its nuances, but it didn't quite work.
So the emphasis in the franchise's fourth part is on paring that experience back a touch, and focussing on slightly grander details to make the match play all the more exciting. The game's camera defaults to the style of a TV broadcast, complete with slow motion replays and locker room pre-game atmosphere shots, and it really can't be underestimated how much this sells the sense of spectacle. The simple act of suggesting the game you're playing is worthy of TV broadcast ups the ante just enough to provide a base for a much more focused style of gameplay.
In that arena, Top Spin 4 still rewards practice. There are more than trophies and achievements to be earned in the game's Top Spin Academy – it's a smart introduction to the new control system on offer. The learning curve is steep at first, and on-screen helpers rather aggressively chastise you for button-mashing panic as you start in the deep end of player control.
But pretty soon its control system – in which basic shot types, flat, slice, lob, and top spin, are assigned to the four coloured buttons – starts to feel more comfortable, and you're able to start attempting a couple of the modifiers on offer via the shoulder buttons. There are two basic types of shot play – control and power shots – and which you use is defined by how you choose to play a point.
What's more, the academy imparts strategy suggestions that come very close to mimicking the real game: you can choose to defend or attack, serve and volley or work on precise takedowns, and the game will teach you – both in these training sessions and proper match play – how and when to execute what you've learnt.
Combined with one of the most extensive career modes ever seen in a tennis videogame, the real sense of career progression as you level a character up does start to make it feel like you're really on the tour. Top Spin 4's extensive character creation tool - which through strange happenstance resulted in an uncanny Charlie Sheen lookalike when we played around with it – lets you define the look of a player right down to the distance between his eyes.
Its flexibility allows the game to generate a wealth of generic pro players to tour with as you make your way up through the minor tournaments that kick off your career, and because they're all defined by the same variable stats you are, you'll learn their individual strategies and how to take them down as you meet them more than once in various scuffles.
Of course, the real excitement comes when you get to the majors and slams, and you come face to face with some of the greatest players on the tour today. It's credit to the journey it takes to get there that facing Nadal or Federer for the first time begins with a real sense of anticipation. You can hop into a quick play with them – or, of course, masters Sampras and Agassi – any time you like, but the pacing of the game's career mode makes waiting for that first encounter there all the more rewarding.
The player roster continues to impress – beyond the four already mentioned you'll come up against the likes of Novak Djokoviæ, Serena Williams, Andy Murray and Caroline Wozniacki to name a few, and masters like Boris Becker, Bjorn Borg and Ivan Lendl are also ready and waiting. Top Spin 4 wisely replicates their playing style as closely as possible, further adding to the excitement of facing them and ensuring you're kept on your toes when you start competing at this level.
The game features a handful of fully licensed major arenas, with versions of Roland Garros, and the US and Australian opens, as well as the O2 Arena for the ATP World Tour Finals. But cracks start to show with disappointing omissions like Wimbledon – a grass court Dublin Open rather distracts from effect Top Spin 4 goes to great lengths to build.
©2011-03-17, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved