This game is no where near as hard as it's made out to be. It's also quite fun to play.
Most of the reviews said the controls are too hard to master and it would take weeks to even be able to basically return the ball into play off a second serve. Therefore, unless you were willing to take the time to master it, you should look at something more like Virtua Tennis.
"Well" I thought, "I'm willing to put in the time" so I went down and got it, a little reluctantly of course.
When I got home, I headed straight for the "Top Spin School", as I wanted to at least try to come to terms with the controls, before going out and embarrassing myself in front of the fans on centre court...
In Top Spin School, I started by having to hit returns from a service machine. I totally missed the first two, but made the third and the next and the next and so on... All you need to do is position yourself just to the side of the path of the ball and a little way back so the ball can bounce up to hitting height, press and let go of a shot button just as the ball bounces and voila! The almost legendarily (is that a word?) difficult Top Spin 3 shot has been made.
Hmmmmmmmm....
So I headed into an exhibition match and played as Blake, against Roddick to see if I could play against his big serve and, to put it bluntly, it was easy!
Following the technique I learned in Top Spin School, I was wiping the court with Mr. Roddick's, I should add, nicely rendered behind. Which is to say, the graphics and animation are great on this game, but that doesn't seem to be a point of contention about TS3, so I'll hand that point to the A-Rod just for consolation and he can discuss it in the press conference after the match.
This was being done on the easiest difficulty though, so I thought, "It can't be that much harder if I ramp it up a little."
My little brother was watching the whole time and he wanted a go too, so we decided to play doubles, on the same side, but for some reason, he wanted to try "Very hard" difficulty (the hardest) even though He'd never played before...
Well, cutting the story short, the match ended about 7-5 6-4 6-4, we won!
It was a lot closer, but seriously not that hard.
The conclusion?
Top Spin 3 isn't as hard as the reviewers make it out to be and I definitely class it as "pick up and play", albeit, as long as you have some video gaming experience, which both I and my little brother (who was playing his first match on the highest difficulty and coping) admittedly do have.
The game is also great fun to play, although it does have its issues, which I won't cover here (I've said enough for one review), but you can find out about them in other reviews. These issues aren't glaring, on;y minor. (I'll leave that typo there, to show a case in point)
Carreer mode is addictive, if not too involving and I'm sure the online mode will be great, once it gets up and running.
If you wanted to find out about the other aspects of the game, read other reviews. I basically agree with pretty much everything else being said about Top Spin 3, both positive and negative, it's just the difficulty that I wanted to clear up and I'm by no means the most hardcore gamer out there either.
If you like Tennis, even sports games in general and know your X and Circle from your L2 and R1 buttons, give this a try and you'll be hitting backhand return winners past the A-Rod in NO time.