Spartan 117:
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OXM SAYS:
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Posted on: Jun 25, 2008
Top Spin 3
WORDS BY: Paul Curthoys
Top Spin 3 puts all this to fine use in terrific career and online modes, and gorgeous graphics and animations give you plenty of pretty to gawp at no matter where you play. While the career is the standard noob-to-god path, the structure isn’t. You start out playing on a local playground, move up to more formal leagues at local colleges, and eventually earn an invite to the junior tour. Put in a good year there, and you can get invited to the pros and beyond. Challenge is everywhere you turn — at first, your rookie can barely hit the ball, so you have to hack out a win from the mess of his “skills.” Then when you first make the juniors, everyone is so much better that it’s almost daunting. But scratch out some XP here and there while studying your opponents’ patterns, and your rank will climb in no time. Hey, if you want to pretend you can beat Federer with your pinkie, you can always go play an exhibition match on Easy.
On the online side, Top Spin 3 sadly fails to provide four-player doubles from four 360s, but the game takes the sting out of the disappointment with its nifty World Tour mode. Here you can enter a set of tournaments, and matchmaking puts you against an opponent who’s reached the same round as you (quarterfinals, semis, and so on). If you lose, you can’t re-enter for two weeks — though you can play in ever-present one-off games — which puts actual meaning into the scrapping for leaderboard position.
Top Spin 3 might seem like it’s testing your tolerance for sucking at a game. But there’s no tilting at windmills — abundant gameplay riches and rewards are here, just waiting for you to mine them, and they make your inevitable triumph that much sweeter.
PREVOn Xbox 360
- Ingenious new controls.
- Slick Career and World Tour modes make a stellar combo.
- No true four-player online doubles...still!
- When is 2K Sports going to start designing menus that don’t hurt to look at?
Mon, 07/14/2008 - 10:44
Posted by digdug113
Well, I just bought this game and I'm a big fan of the franchise. Game #1 in the series got challenging towards the end when I was trying to win Grand Slams. Game #2 wasn't that challenging, but the training, mini-games, and items were fun. Game #3 is exactly what I wanted - challenging with customization of my character... but the customization falls short and the training was taken out for XP. Additionally, there was no K-Swiss (I play tennis too and it's my fave). I know a lot of reviewers like Virtua better because you jump in and play the game quickly, but that is not what this game is like. I like challenging games, that are easy to learn and tough to master. This game certainly fits what the Dr. ordered. It's definitely the best Top Spin version thus far. If you want arcadey, go for Virtua.
**Truth be told, I'm right and you're wrong (most of the time).**
Fri, 06/27/2008 - 14:40
Posted by mastur cheef
I was watching X Play on G4 and they gave this game a 2/5 stars because they said it was really boring...
Fri, 06/27/2008 - 05:42
Posted by PaperLantern
Yeah I've noticed now that you don't really have to, but it's nice to pull off something advanced like that.
Thu, 06/26/2008 - 15:44
Posted by Paul OXM
They'll be easier to successfully pull off once you level up your guy some more. I'm guessing your player's too much of a rookie to do too well at them right now. As to whether you have to do them, depends on how good you are at just tennis and what difficulty you're on. I play on Normal, tend to stick to mostly working the angles, and never felt like I had to use them, though I did sometimes.
Thu, 06/26/2008 - 14:23
Posted by PaperLantern
Took me forever to get through the training in the demo, but once I got it down, I was absolutely owning Andy Roddick with my smooth moves.
Paul, I have a question though... you know all those advanced techniques that you learn in the beginning (drop shots, slices, etc)? Do you have to know how to do those later on in the game to stand a chance? Because I didn't do too well on those.