	Top Spin
	Developer: PAM Publisher: 2K Sports Release Date: Out Now Players: 1-4, Network play	Words By:
Two years ago Top Spin was released for the Xbox and was a great success. Finally released under the 2K label of sports games Top Spin is definitely showing the strain from being out of practice for so long. The visuals are serviceable on PS2, but look amateurish compared to the older Xbox version and the other PS2 tennis games that have been released recently. The players look chunky but undefined, the courts (particularly grass) look almost right, but like they’re missing something - Smash Court Pro Tour 2 had little things like uneven grass colouring and existing chalk smudges, the courts in TS just look too pristine… A big problem I found straightaway was that the grass on the court is too bright a green so people without perfect eyes or with colour-blindness (damn my infirmity!) will find it impossible to follow the ball around the court! After running around blindly swiping at the air like a blindfolded boxer I thought, “sod it” and moved onto clay instead! Now this was better - the blue court made the balls easy to see, so I could focus on the gameplay rather than tearing my hair out. The game seems to move quite clumsily with shots registering split seconds after you press the button and players teleporting a little so that the forehand animation lines up with where the ball is going to land. But once you get used to the strange tempo the game works quite well. The AI responds well to the way you play - if you hang at the baseline a lot he’ll try some lob shots to bring you back in, and then try and lob one over you. This creates some hectic games and some tense volleys but only when the AI wants to - one minute it’ll play like Hantuchova, the next it’ll play like Kournikova… After playing a few exhibition and Vs. games I plunged into the very anal-retentive Career mode. The create-a-player section is so damn detailed that you can even choose the DNA of your player, not to mention shape his looks and attributes! Look at it this way - the game has over 20 different eyebrow shapes, and you can even have your own ugly mug in the game if you have an EyeToy camera - it’s that detailed! We went for a large-jawed bearded man-monster of a Dane called Gregor Plonkovic, kitting him out in a masculine camo tank top and matching shorts! After creating your player you arrive at the world screen, which is split into several continents, each with their own events, shops and challenges. While moving in between the various areas, particularly the locker room (it’s for clothes okay!) you’ll find how annoying the loading times can be. Just going to a clothes shop can waste a minute or so and if you press something by accident you can waste another three or four minutes loading backwards and forwards. Wars have been fought in less time. Some of the challenges you can do are for a sponsor (Adidas, K-Swiss etc) and open up new items to wear and others are in training centres that let focus on an ability (serve, volley etc) and let you add skill points to that skill. This would be a good idea if the challenges (especially the training ones) weren’t so damn simple and just feel like cheap filler. The early tournament games are also so damn easy you wonder why they were even put in and every point goes the same way - you hit the ball right, comp hits it back, you hit it left, comp misses. Repeat until you start to lose the will to live (usually about five minutes). This is a shame because if you can persevere through the crap games you can have quite a good game with the computer (but with the consistency issues from earlier). Another thing playing the harder computer players brings up is the “risk-shot” system. This is a skill-timing shot where you hold down the R1 button and release it when the bar is in the small red area. Get it right and you unleash a powerful shot. Get it wrong and you’ll hit the ball into the net or out. I still fail to see the point of this shot as it’s pretty damn hard to pull off and even when you do it’s not that much harder than a normal shot, and can still be returned fairly easily. The Skill/Reward ratio on the shot seems to be way off and it becomes more annoying when the computer players pull off every other shot as this risk shot, undermining the effort the player has to put in to pull it off. The risk shot is one in a long line of pointless ideas in TS, another of which is the ITZ meter. This is some kind of crowd popularity meter based on special shots made and performance in the game, apparently. I’m not sure how the hell it’s calculated (probably using the same program that calculates that consumers like Army men games) as when I was playing my friend he was pulling off risk shots, aces, the lot but I had nearly twice the ITZ that he had! When your ITZ bar’s finally full the bar flashes a bit… and… I think that’s about all it does. Your player doesn’t play any better, he doesn’t grow extra arms or get a shield, nothing happens! The king of useless has got to be the laughable “attitude” buttons. After a point is scored, by pressing R2 or L2 you can taunt your opponent to make him extra mad. These “taunts” range from pumping your fist in the air to waving your arms at him. I think in one he swings his racquet around a bit. There are literally only about 3 or 4 taunts and they’ll repeat themselves over and over… what fun! When I look at Top Spin I can only see what has been done much better in other games, particularly in Smash Court 2 (which is only about 18 quid now). The courts seem sterile and lifeless, the sound is particularly awful (the umpires sound like they’re using walkie-talkies), the game moves clumsily and you don’t even get a full roster of licensed players (just a few big names for men and women). EyeToy support is a nice idea on paper, but as with F1 2005, plastered-on faces tend to look strange and incongruous. In TS there is a good game but it’s been bogged down with pointless game modes and quite lazy development in places, which is a shame since over two years it’s actually managed to move backwards from what was really quite a good game on Xbox.

Best Bits
- Attention to detail (in places)
- Big career mode
- Multiplayer is quite fun.

Worst Bits
- Pointless gimmicks
- Poor sound
- Learning curve too shallow
- Empty online mode


by: Crazypunk