Tim Henman had a bit of a return to form recently and beat just about everyone that matters to prove once again that he isn't just a slightly posh overrated loser and that he can play a bit after all - now you get the chance to do the same on your Xbox in this stunning looking tennis sim.

There's no Henman (strange because he seems to be in every other tennis game), but you do get such racqueteers as Martina Hingis, Anna Kournikova (she plays tennis too?), Pete Sampras, Lleyton Hewitt, Gustavo Kuerten and some other pros that I've never heard of. This relative lack of famous names is compensated by the career mode that gives you the opportunity to design your own lookalike, alter ego or hideous mutant and play on tour with your own name (or a comedy one like Doris Decker, Ace McQuick or Holden Meballs).

An exhibition mode allows you to use all of the pros (and a selection of other highly skilled fictional ones), but the game that most will head for is the career mode. Once you've designed your player in the most comprehensive editor this side of Tiger Woods 2004 or a WWE game you can head to the game's world map and start learning how to play. The player editor allows you to change just about everything, down to height, weight, posture, eye colour and even how much their nose turns up at the end. You get a choice of clothing and unlock more along the way - or you can go shopping for the flashier outfits and gear when you've won some prize money and some garments and equipment are ridiculously expensive, presumably to tempt you to keep playing the solo game and winning prize money. You can either head for minor tournaments or sponsor challenges, or a better plan might be to go straight to one of the game's many coaches. These clever dicks will help you improve your forehand, backhand, serve or volley for a fee, and although you only get a limited amount of stars to attribute to the various shots and skills, you really can feel and see the incremental improvements. Master one level and you can fly to another continent to learn from another coach, they put you through boringly similar but increasingly tricky tests to earn your upgrade, the problem with this is that they're far too easy to pay for and complete, meaning that in my opinion you can end up with a maxed-out player way too soon.

   

Top Spin is a really nice looking game, from the superbly animated players (only very rarely does the motion capture fail to convince and Lleyton Hewitt's familiar jumping forehand looks fantastic!) to the detailed courts with umpire, ball boys, line judges and over-enthusiastic crowd that stand to applaud every other shot. The crowd is also noticeably rather patchy for the early matches and the stadium packed for the final - a nice touch. Realistic surface textures, nets, lighting and shadows, incidental animations and even speed cameras all bring the game to life, but the most impressive single element of Top Spin has to be the combination of look and feel whilst playing on a clay court - sliding in to crack a shot and seeing the player slither realistically complete with dust and skidmarks on the powdery court surface looks absolutely amazing, and because of the excellent use of vibration on the pad also feels just right too.

The options allow you to set up custom tournaments and play multiplayer games (including system link and Xbox Live), but I was amazed and baffled to see that you can't play a mixed match or even mixed doubles - now I know the male players are more powerful but this enforced tennis gender divide borders on sexism and is disappointing and of course, unrealistic. The Xbox Live game is also sadly flawed, with lag cropping up regularly (and often at the most vital and annoying moment in a rally), the timing on shots that have a gauge (serves, drop and risk shots) often seem delayed and you have to 'learn' the new timing before you'll be able to compete online. These technical problems and the sheer fact that unless you have a maxed-out serve and forehand and are nippy as hell around the court mean that no matter how good a "technician" you are, unless you hit your fair share of boring aces or impossible to return passing shots you'll get beaten every time. Also, due to the fact that the game has been out for ages in the US, sadly many players you come across are impossibly attributed players thanks to either Gameshark™ cheats or chipped Xbox downloaded players - obviously the choice of lazy losers but unfortunately Microsoft seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it. The XSN tournaments are undoubtedly a cool idea, but I always seem to get drawn against someone who beats me easily, or the other way about - close matches are rare and this common one-sidedness implies to me that one player or the other is always getting the benefit of (or being hampered by) lag. We thought it may be an issue with the speed of our connection but speaking to other gamers during matches they have the same problem and we have successfully hosted 16 player Crimson Skies games and world-wide 8 player PGR2 races with no trouble. (or maybe I'm just bitter because I'm rubbish at tennis)… (Oh, and they do promise to try and do something about the lag problems).

   

The previously mentioned over-the-top crowd is backed up with your very own ability to act like an right hyped-up overpaid twit by making your player show "attitude" after every shot. This could be a taunt or a celebration if you win the point, or a racquet-throwing tantrum if you lose it (thankfully they removed the ability to argue with the umpire that was originally planned for the game). I found that the underlying US over-competitive streak, which is wider than the Mississippi (from the OTT player and crowd reactions to the way you can simply dump a sponsor to go to another just for money in order to buy a new pair of trainers or that smart hoody you saw in the shop), annoying and at times embarrassing to behold, but the worst thing of all is that if you cancel the "attitude" animation with an impatient button press when you're serving then sometimes the game remembers this press and starts your service action the instant that the game returns to the gameplay view. It's a shame they didn't dump this stupid, hyped-up feature and spend more time on the replay mode, which is truncated and often shows the action from a bizarre long range high angle camera. Players also don't react to good shots or to winning a match like they should - your player will drop to their knees and act like they've survived a battle with cancer, lost their entire family in a tragic accident and then won a Grand Slam tournament - all simply because they beat a no-hoper in a sponsor playoff on a public court with nobody watching. They also walk away immediately after winning match or even Championship point like they don't know they've won, only then does a (usually OTT) celebration cut scene ummm… cut in.

As good as Top Spin looks and plays (offline), with more varied shotmaking ability than any tennis game previously, it seems to lack the lasting appeal of Sega's seminal Virtua series. EA quickly learned that to make a sports franchise into a classic series they needed to add fun, which is what they did with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 (and improved on with 2004), and PAM Development need to do the same with Top Spin, which is a realistic and good looking tennis game, but is sadly lacking in the 'fun' and 'longevity' departments. For most gamers after six or eight hours play the only reason to return to the solo game will be to win another tournament in order to buy some more clothes, or to start over with a new persona. I think Top Spin is a fine tennis game, but it's also the epitome of the overused reviewer's term "a flawed masterpiece"…