Top Spin 3

"You are better off playing some real tennis"

Watching tennis is great, especially when watching two top players in the world hitting one great shot after another down the line, lob overhead, close to the net, using every inch of every available space on the court to beat the opponent. Playing tennis is great too, even though I am never good with the racket. However, playing Top Spin 3 on the DS is not going to improve my game, nor is it much fun if you choose to build your own avatar.

Gameplay

Top Spin 3 is nothing out of the ordinary. It features Play Now, Career, Tournament and Mini-games, pretty much what you would expect from a tennis simulation.

First, Career. Let's get it out of my system first. Career mode sucks. There, I said it. Career is the meat of the game where you will probably spend most of the time. It typically involves creating your own avatar who ranks last on the world ranking. You then train him / her up, put him / her in a few tournaments, and hope that one day, he / she will become the next World Number One.

In Top Spin 3, your avatar is quite customisable, from the skin tone to the colour of the racket down to the minuscule details like the serving style and whether or not he / she will grunt. After you have created your ultimate super tennis hero, you are presented with three options, Event, Tournament and Training. The calendar works on a weekly basis. Each time you pick one of the options, it is considered as a week (with the exception of tournament, where it could be held over several weeks).

Tournament is obviously the place to be where you play tennis, and hopefully, skilful enough to take home the trophy and improve in ranking. There are tournaments held throughout the year, but you are restricted to only those that your ranking would allow. So rank 100 is not going to let you play in tournaments that require a ranking of 90 and above. So you must be thinking, "that's easy enough, I'll just train up my player, and beat other crappy players."

So off to training you go. There are multiple mini-games that you can play. Upon the successful completion of each game, you will be given skill points that you can distribute across your attributes. None of the games are particularly interesting or challenging, and most of them are locked, requiring a higher rank to unlock. The initial three are relatively easy to beat. However, once you beat that particular mini-game, you cannot play it again until your rank increases.

So what is there to do once you have beaten all three mini-games and your ranking is not high enough yet to unlock the next level? You can enter tournaments, but as I have mentioned before, you cannot enter any one you want. And if you are beaten in the first match, your rank will stay the same, and you cannot go training to improve your skills. Your player sucks, you are not good enough to beat anyone, and you cannot improve your skills. You have to wait for the next tournament, and hopefully you are up against a not-so-good opponent that you can actually beat.

That leaves you with Events when there is no tournament and no training. They are utterly useless as a lot of them involve random "events". You could go on a honeymoon, or get your wrist broken (and subsequently fixed), or go on a holiday, or whatever. My player went on a holiday to Brazil one week, and then onto Greece the week after. No wonder his ranking stayed at the bottom of the world. These events are completely random and irrelevant, they do not help or hinder the player in any way, and are only there to advance time.

Sometimes, a mini-game would pop up, but it is similar to the ones found in training. The only difference is that instead of skills points that you acquire during training, you obtain new items that you can use to customise your player. There are also sponsor events, basically just another tennis match.

During the course of your career, you will receive emails from your coach giving you 'tips' (which are useless), or fans telling you to take it easy on your broken wrist, or a sponsor telling you off for losing (oh, they are mad). It's ironic that during one of the mini-game event, my player could not complete the mini-game only to be told by the sponsor to practice. Well, I would if I could, but some idiotic developers decided to lock all the trainings, reckoning doing them once is enough. What a stupid idea.

Career mode is not an entertaining experience. The flow of the game is disjointed and the mode is very poorly implemented. The mini games range from easy to frustrating. It is frustrating not because the game is hard, but because the game is unresponsive. There is one mini-game where you serve the ball into a coloured region on the other half of the court. The smaller the region the higher the score. However, there are times when I swear my ball has hit the spot, yet the game did not register it. It then becomes a frustrating exercise and ceased to be fun.

So maybe the Play Now feature can redeem this game. The Play Now feature is just an exhibition match, if you will. You choose from 12 male or 8 female tennis players, including (former World Number One) Roger Federer, and (former World Number One and the now retired) Justine Henin, and play a match against an AI opponent. The face buttons represent each of the different shots (normal, lob, slice, top spin), and the shoulder buttons allow pro shots. To execute a pro shot, you need to time it right. With a bit of practice, that should not be a problem.

The AI is tough, and provides a great challenge for those who want it. But at the same time, it could put some gamers off because of the difficulty. The DS version features a boost feature that makes your tennis hero move faster and hit harder temporarily, but the effect feels sluggish and unresponsive. It's more of a hindrance than it is an advantage.

Playing as one of the world's top player is somewhat easier than playing your own avatar, since the tennis player already has a set of skills that will most definitely be more powerful than your woeful little guy, especially in the beginning of his short-lived Career.

The default camera angle is zoomed in and locked onto your player, while it can be a good thing and show your tennis hero clearly, it is not very helpful if you cannot see the ball that was lobbed overhead, which happens a lot if you run up to the net often. The other view is a TV style top-down angle that makes everything looks small.

The Tournament mode is just what is says. You play as one of the top players and play through a series of matches to clinch the winning trophy. It is the Career mode without the career.

The overall gameplay is not particularly enjoyable. The Career is annoying, the Play Now feature and the mini-games finish all too quickly. About the only thing going for it is the Tournament. But that is not enough to keep the gamers satisfied.

Graphics

Top Spin 3 is full of polygon count. All the players are clearly visible and distinguishable. At least Roger Federer in the game resembles Roger Federer in real life (somewhat) and not just some messed up polygon. However, once you get on with the match, you will not notice much difference between the players.

One thing I like about the graphics is that it shows all the different type of shots quite evidently. If you do a trick shot like behind the back, or between the legs, the graphics show off your moves quite nicely.

Sound

Music is non-existent, and sound effect is what you would expect. You hear the crowd cheering, and ball bouncing, and players grunting, just do not expect anything spectacular. It is a very standard affair.

Some of the sound effects are not even appropriate. When was the last time you hear the crowd cheer and clap when Federer served a fault?

Replay value

Top Spin 3 has as much replay value as any other sports game. If you like the sports, you will probably play it for a long time. A lot of the replay value comes from the Career mode, propelling your character to the world number one spot. But with all the problems in Career mode, you must be very persistent in order to reap any rewards that the game offers. On the other hand, if you just want a quick match, Top Spin 3 should keep you happy for a while.

Overall

Top Spin 3 DS is nothing new. There are tennis games before it and there will be tennis games after it. The Tournament mode is passable, but it is hindered by some major flaws in the Career mode, making it an unattractive package. The graphics is decent, but the camera angels are awkward and often cause frustration among players. The whole package is let down by its presentation, not helped by the strange game flow of the Career mode.

Although it is a passable game on the DS, I suggest you stick with your favourite tennis game on the console for now. If you must have something on the move, bring a tennis racket and play some real tennis instead.

Good:

* Tough opponent providing a good challenge
* Decent graphics

Bad:

* Career Mode poorly implemented
* Lack of music
* Awkward camera angle

Score (out of 10)

Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 7
Sound: 3
Replay: 3

Overall: 4

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/09

Game Release: Top Spin 3 (US, 06/23/08)