Bought this game after I read the Gamespot review. Thought it was going to be a great game... but what a nasty surprise.
To begin with, Top Spin 4 lacks in something that sports games have been trying to achieve for the last 10 years: variety. There are only four different off-line game modes and a few on-line, all of them, involving regular tennis matches, mano-a-mano or Co-op with the CPU on doubles. But that's it.
So you maybe end up wishing that the bold part, the great game design, the numerous variations in game modes, the cool training sessions, everything that could make this game great, could be found on the Career Mode. And that is inaccurate as well.
Believe in me when I say that Virtua Tennis (yes, the one for Dreamcast), was way better and much more entertaining than this version.
Yes, the graphics are cool. I even think that everyone on the crowd is different (few repeated patterns). And yes, the sound is good enough for a tennis game (though playing it in stereo or 5.1 makes no big difference). And yes, the controls are neat. I actually disagree with the comment on the Move controls. You CAN win the big events using them because they could be as accurate as the real thing.
All those things are OK, maybe even great (you call them awesome), but after playing this game for a while it gets really repetitive, and that's what kills a videogame nowadays.
I haven't played Virtua Tennis 4 but I guess it must be way better that Top Spin 4.
Mark wrote "This is the standard by which all future tennis games will be judged, and as close as you can get to the real thing without picking up a racquet." If this is right, trying to play real tennis for more than a week must be pretty damn boring.
Rent it for a week. If you liked it, rent it for one more week. The hype shouldn't last any longer.