If you have been looking for good tennis games like me for the past months, you may well have found it with topspin. What gamers usually want with tennis games is many (at least some) featured pros, customizable players, good graphics and lots of tournaments to win, trainings to enjoy, good controls and winning against your neighbour or with your neighbour against the CPU. Well, Topspin will satisfy these needs, at least to some extent.
Topspin features pros like lleyton Hewitt, Martina Hingis, Elena Dementieva, Anna Kournikova and some older-generation pros like Pete Sampras and Micheal Chang. Each has their strengths and 'special skill'.
However, you can start your own career from scratch, with a player you create. You can customize his/her appearance (face, body and clothes), type of player (aggressive, defensive or technical) and personal info like name, left or right handed and nationality. The type of player modifies 3 characteristics like strength, speed and accuracy. The nationality of the player will determine in which region he will start his career, although this is not of high importance since air travel is free in this game. Furthermore, you can actually use your career player in other modes of the game, which is quite an incentive to boost your career player.
Graphics-wise, Topspin is good as you can seed the faces of the players are quite well done. But most importantly, the movements of the players look realistic, whether running after a lobbed ball or when making drop shots and smashes. This helps gamers appreciate your player's movements and shots better in replays which are well-made, 'as shown in TV', you would say! There are 2 types of cameras, one with the overview of the court (more useful) and one viewing the back of the players (to get a good look of the back of the player). Both of the camera views are playable, but the court camera is easier to play than the more 'aesthetic' player back camera. There are also shops to buy new clothes and equipments and as such, change your player's looks and make the game a tad less repetitive.
There are also quite a number of tournaments featured and their winning prizes can give an idea of how hard the tournament will prove of a challenge. A tournament, luckily, only has 3 stages, i.e., quarter-final, semi-final and final, so you don't have to play 10 matches to life the trophy! A match is a best of 3 sets where one set ends with 3 games instead of 6. These limits help make tournaments long enough to be interesting and short enough so as not to be boring. Also, by winning in the quarter and semi-finals, you win some prize money and rank points, so it's not a total loss if you don't win the final.
Training wise, you can always practice in the exhibition mode as there is no real 'practice' mode once you start your career. There are 4 main skills to be mastered and these are 'serve', 'volley', 'forehand' and 'backhand' where each skill has a max of 5 stars you can master. You can learn these skills by spending a 'training star', but that's where there is a catch. You only have 14 stars and each time you train one of your skills, money and one star is used, whether you complete the training or not. That's where some gamers may find it a bit hard, especially if they have just begun playing. The trainings are not particularly hard, but you need to know the trick to do it well, and in the meantime, you might use up one of your precious stars, since you cannot save and re-load as you wish as the game saves itself automatically after every tournament and training alike. At some point in time, you can gain special skills and a maximum of 4 skills can be obtained. You will have to choose one of a list of 4 special skills like 'speed', 'topspin' and 'volley', for example. Each of these special skills provide a boost to your particular attribute and you'll see the difference when you play 450th rank and a top 10 ranked player, although it may happen that top 10 players may get demoted to 40th rank.
The controls of Topspin are also quite interesting. You have the normal movement buttons plus 8 additional buttons. The main 4 buttons control the type of shots, that is, slice, topspin, lob and a 4th one called safe. Each of these shots can be directed to some extent but you will have greater controls on the directions of your topspins and lob shots. There are 2 additional buttons for special shots known as 'drop shots' and 'risk shots'. These shots are harder to make, but also makes it harder for you opponents to play also. Whenever any of these buttons are pressed, a gauge appears and the buttons must be held and released only when the gauge is in the middle (and the latter turns red). Otherwise the shot will be too powerful or not powerful enough and may result in a lost point. However, the rewards for these shots are worthwhile too. The animation for such shots are really good and also is usually a winning shot, so practice the timing well! The remaining 2 buttons are for negative and positive attitudes which you can exhibit after winning or losing a point. It helps you gain the crowd's support and when the crowd's meter is full, you can make risk shots and drop shots more easily. You can also boost your crowd's support by winning points and successfully completing drop and risk shots and vice versa.
Being able to play with your friends is also possible in Topspin, be it as doubles or singles in tournament. This mode makes the game even more fun as you are no restricted to a single person enjoying the game.
To summarize, the game has many strong points namely good game-play, graphics and interesting controls like the risk and drop shots which add some spice to your games. The customisable face and body and quite extensive combination of clothes and equipment make the game less boring that it might have been. The introduction of special skills makes training worthwhile and fun.
The downsides are those which are common for tennis games, that is, once you mastered the game and become number 1, it's kind of boring. Luckily you can still play with your friends and show them your skills. The crowd and player's animation may also be boring if you play hour's non-stop.
Otherwise, it's a game worth the money and earns a score of 8 out of 10 in my opinion.
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