By James Waterson
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(August 11, 2011) For almost 40 years, video game developers have tried to recreate the strategic nuance and excitement of professional tennis, but they have only achieved mixed results.
Pong started the trend in 1972, but tennis games became more detailed in the 1990s when developers had the 16-bit processing power of the Super Nintendo to play with.
One of the first games I ever played was Jimmy Connors Pro Tennis Tour, which came out in 1993. I remember being hooked on it because it did a great job of simulating the thrill of winning a long point, or of breaking an opponent in an important part of the match.
That’s always been the challenge. How do you simulate something intangible? How do you make a game that is exciting to play time after time?
As it turns out, Top Spin 4 has answers those questions with aplomb.
The first Top Spin game was released on the Xbox in 2003. At the time, the tennis video game market was dominated by Sega’s Virtua Tennis series, which took a more “arcade” approach to the sport.
Therefore, Top Spin stepped in to try to fill the void by trying to be a true tennis simulation, and it did relatively well. The series continued to improve with each new release, but the latest iteration is considerably better than anything else out there.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the game was developed by 2K Czech, a game studio based in the same country that Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, Thomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek call home.
2K Czech has put together a game that has an incredibly deep career mode, straightforward controls that take time and practice to master, and an overall cinematic experience that I found very immersive.
So we’ll start with the game's roster. The game features Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and six other ATP players. It also has Serena Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Ana Ivanovic, Vera Zvonareva, as well as Bjorn Borg, Boris Becker, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.
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The game also features hard, carpet, grass and clay courts (that players slide on) in faithfully rendered stadiums such as the Australian Open’s Rod Laver Arena, Arthur Ashe Stadium, Court Philippe Chatrier, and more.
All of these courts and players are accessible out of the box in the game’s exhibition mode, in which you can play the stars on various difficulty levels.
You have a choice of four shots (topspin, flat, slice and lob) that work best in certain situations. Want to open up the court? Hit a top spin shot. Are you on the run and barely getting to your opponent’s shots? Slice works best for that.
That holds true for the serve as well, although you can use the right thumb stick to hit an “advanced serve,” which is more effective than if you use the buttons.
To hit the best shot possible, you’ll need to time it correctly. The longer you hold the button down, the more power you get, but you need to release the button at the right time to hit it effectively.
If you’ve played tennis games before, this won’t be difficult to master, and it is incredibly important if you don’t want to get hit off the court by your opponent on the higher difficulty levels.
You can also create a player and take him or her into the game’s extensive career mode, which offers the ability to increase your character’s ability as you play. You start off at some of the minor tournaments and work your way up to the Grand Slams.
Progressing to the Grand Slam tournaments takes a while, so when you finally find your way there and see you have to play Nadal in the semifinal of the French Open, it can be a pretty thrilling experience.
Especially so after you win a 30-shot rally that ends that has both players scrambling side to side and ends with a well-placed drop shot. I’ve never pumped my fist at a game before, but you better believe I did when I won the French Open with my created player.
The intensity is ratcheted up because the pro players play exactly as they should. Nadal uses his wide serves top open the court and he runs around his backhand to hit his forehand,
Federer prefers to hit his forehand inside out and he’ll throw in the occasional serve and volley, and Djokovic sets up his down the line backhand.
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Even Sampras' style is reflected well. Points will be short because he'll attack the net relentlessly.
And that’s what makes this game so different. The players behave as they should, so (just like in real tennis) you have to work out how to attack their weaknesses to beat them.
You can accomplish that in several ways, depending on your player’s own strengths. With the control scheme, which enables you to quickly follow a shot in by pressing the right bumper, you can attack the net as efficiently as the computer does.
It’s not a completely perfect system, though. Sometimes the player will stop moving too soon, and an easy floater can turn into a half volley. But when it works, it’s incredibly satisfying.
And that’s a good way to summarize my experience with this game. It looks great, it plays very well, and there’s enough variety in what you can do and what the computer players do to
keep you hooked for a while.
If you’re a tennis fan and you have an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3, you need to check out this game.