Oh my aching thumbs...and head...and neck...
But for some reason, video game developers have had conniptions trying to get it right, with more failures than successes out there for the various consoles. Add to this the fact that tennis is not exactly the world's most popular sport, and you have a possible recipe for disaster.
So it was with some surprise that I noticed 2KSports was releasing a version of Top Spin (2) on the DS. I happen to like playing and watching tennis, so instead of picking up that used copy of Burnout Legends, I grabbed this one instead. Given the dubious and mixed ratings for Burnout, I figure it can wait for another week (and I am hoping most of the poor reviews it got were from people loyal to the x-box version, which i didn't much like). So what game am I reviewing here again? Oh yeah, tennis.
Like any other top Spin/Virtua Tennis affair, you play through a career with a single player, travelling around the world from tourney to tourney, making money you can spend to upgrade your player for the tougher tournaments down the road.
Oh, wait a minute....you don't buy upgrades here. Undoubtedly figuring it would make things too easy allowing you to just buy new stats-enhancing gear, the designers upped the ante this time. When you win a tournament, you earn money to purchace the *opportunity* to play in a minigame which, if you win, will allow for stats upgrades. You fail, you lose your money.
Thankfully, there are only four of these minigames, and thankfully they aren't overly-difficult (serve at targets, hit targets with groundstrokes, etc.), otherwise you might end up wasting your hard-earned cash while failing to upgrade, putting you at a disadvantage for the next level of tournaments. What is it with tennis game developers and minigames? Did someone do a poll and discover tennis lovers also like side-show carnival games? Surely there is a better, more realistic way to include a way to upgrade your character attributes.....maybe by winning tournaments and beating opponents, like any hack-n-slash dungeon crawl. Anyway....
Control of your player and groundstrokes take place with the standard d-pad to move, buttons to hit different shots (a=flat, x=topspin, etc.). Initially, your ability to hit the ball is extremely poor, such that no matter how much you try not to, you will inevitably hit the ball right back to the other player. As well, your position relative to the ball plays a very important role in determining whether you hit a solid shot, or end up plunking an underhanded baby-stroke. Unlike Mario or Virtua Tennis, your player will not auto-adjust when near the ball, meaning you will spend the first half-hour or so just trying to figure out how far away you should be standing from the ball to hit it properly (I can't count hw many times my avatar hit the ball very softly back to the opponent, who crushed it on the next shot). If you can get past this frustrating beginning, the game does get easier to play as you up your stat points on control, speed, etc. I found it strange that the most difficult matches were the first two or three, but once I began to move up the ranks, found myself destroying the opposition with ease.
Sound is not the clearest....the 8-bit samples of the players are functional, but nothing special. Thankfully, you can turn off the music in the options screen. The announcer sounds like a robot from Tron. Again, not bad enough to be annoying, but it could have been done better...for example, when match point occurs, instead of saying 'advantage player 1', they could have programmed in a vocal shot of 'match point'.
In fact, a lot could have been done better with this game, which makes me think they needed a few more weeks of testing and code-tweaking prior to releasing it. Nothing is unbearably broken in the game, but nothing is spectacular either.
For example, the graphics are not exactly the best the DS has to offer. Players are offered two vantage points to play from: behind-the-back, or the more traditional 3/4 overhead perspective. Neither is particularly appealing, for different reasons.
The over-the-head view results in such small graphics of the players and the bal that it feels like you are trying to control your player while watching from a blimp. The ball ends up being a pixel or two in size, which blends in far too easily to the surrounding graphics, resulting in severe eye strain to keep track of exactly where it is. Behind-the-player allows you to see the ball more easily, since you are at court-level, but the strain on the DS hardware of having to keep the graphics moving at a decent clip results in the action becoming quite choppy, as though you are playing tennis in a room with a strobe light on. This is less evident when your player is standing still, but given the great deal of lateral movement naturally occurring in tennis, these times are rare. It isn't bad enough to completely ruin the game, but it makes for a difficult time of keeping your eye on the ball, and the opposing player. I ended up rationalizing this sputtering view as being a simulation of the jerky perspective that would be occurring if I really was running back and forth on a tennis court. What is annoying about this is that we are talking about a rendered tennis court here, not some alien world of shaded hallways filled with flying sentries. Thanks to MPH, we now have some idea of what the DS graphics capabilities are, which clearly are not being exploited here.
The career mode is not the longest I've seen; there are less than 30 events worldwide to participate in, and once you have won an event, you never play it again. At any given time, only about three or so events are available, resulting in a somewhat linear progression through the mode. I found myself missing Virtua Tennis' method, in which time passes a week at a time, with tournaments repeatedly coming up for grabs....that little added RPG element made for a more immersive experience. This one, however, feels much more like an arcade game experience, with little in the way of depth.
Is it the worst tennis game around? No. But it could have been so much better, with a few tweaks here and there, and a little more attention to detail.
Then again, given the fact that tennis is right up there with curling in terms of popularity, us fans should probably be grateful this game even exists.