Top Spin 2 [X360]

Virtua Tennis demonstrated that you don't have to be into tennis to be into a tennis game. It relied on a sort of democratic arcade gameplay that owed more to Pong than actual tennis. So for people who are into actual tennis, there's Top Spin, which is a mean backhand to Virtua Tennis' easy lob. This is the harder core tennis game, built for people who want the same depth, complexity, and learning curve afforded other sports games.

Depending on how you look at it, one of the worst or best things about Top Spin 2 is how unchanged it is from the original Top Spin. The interface is virtually identical. There are four types of shots, each with a risk option that uses a tricky timing gauge. Mess it up and the ball will hit the net or go out of bounds. Peg the timing just right, and you'll deliver a trickier volley. It's easy enough to play it safe and jockey for position on the court, but sooner or later, someone is liable to try for one the trickier shots, at which point it comes down to how good you've gotten at timing that stupid little meter. To paraphrase the saying, "No twitch, no gain".

But don't despair. Replacing the original game's In the Zone meter is a momentum meter. This fills up as you win matches, giving you access to advanced shots, which are new to Top Spin 2. These don't require any timing meters, and they're great stalemate breakers without forcing you to gamble on risk shots. But as you use advanced shots, you burn your momentum, which makes timing for the risk shots easier.

There's a great bit of strategy in building up momentum and either saving it for risk shots, or using it up for advanced shots. This makes for some wonderful bits of tension and second-guessing, particularly in multiplayer games. When the momentum meter is full, for instance, you've got a dump volley that can tip the ball just over the net. This will keep baseline players on their toes.

This is what's great about the Top Spin games and what's largely intact here. Top Spin 2 is still a game of strategy, skill, and often endurance. It has an uncanny appreciation for the nuances of real tennis. It's smart and unforgiving. But it's also not very friendly to new players. Many of the mechanics aren't very well explained. The advanced shots, for instance, aren't folded into the career mode, which serves as the closest thing to a tutorial for Top Spin 2, until the end of your career.

The career mode revolves around gradually earning stars to put into a variety of stats. Not only are many of these stats unclear, as are the special abilities you're supposed to choose when you pick a character, but they're still ranked by a confusing melange of colored stars. Are two bronze stars better than one silver star? Are four silver stars better than one gold star and one bronze star? Who knows?