Addictive tennis game with a few flaws and long loading times. Great fun alone and together with a friend.
On first sight the game sports some nice graphics and great playing style. As I got into it I learned all about its great points, but also about its multitude of flaws.
The game actually looks and plays like a real tennis game for the most part. When comparing this game to games such as virtua tennis, as many will, you will quickly see that character animation and look and feel of the game are top notch and close to the real thing. Unlike in virtua tennis where the animation looks like a game from the late 90s.
In the game you can create your own character. Despite the enormous array of options to choose from you can basically only make ugly characters. This doesn't really matter though since the playing style is what it's all about. The character starts off at level 1 with stats all at 30 (max is 100). Each level you gain you can spend on one of the main skills "Serve and Volley", "Offensive Baseline", and "Defensive base line".
Serve and Volley focusses on, surprisingly serving and volleying, but also reflexes which allow for better returns. Offensive Baseline focusses on serving, power, stamina and forehand and backhand. Defensive baseline focusses on forehand, backhand, stamina and speed. At the start of your career you'll soon find that your character can't hit a ball inside the court if his life depended on it. You'll struggle through your first matches, most likely losing most of them as you get accustomed to Top Spin 4's timing and aiming controls.
Timing and aiming is everything in Top Spin 4, and getting them right is, let's say, not for everyone. For the main part of the game this really is not an issue, why it is I will go into later. Once you reach level 20 and have unlocked "gold coaches" you can pimp your character to the max with added special abilities and bonus stats. Never however will you be able to create a character that is on par with the top players that you will find on the court. As an example your own character can only have 550 points spent on stats and two special abilities while Nadal has 566 points and three abilities. Getting to level 20 automatically unlocks "fast player creation" which allows your newly created characters to start at level 20.
Beware though, once created you cannot change your characters name, looks and stats. Only the clothing is changable after player creation.
Playing on normal mode you'll zoom through the game. Most oponents will be beaten in two-three shots, most often not going for a ball if you hit it cross court. Normal mode is far too easy... until you hit the grand slams in the semi finals. On normal mode the difficulty jumps somewhere between hard and very hard mode making these oponents nearly impossible to beat right off the bat. The game does not challenge you to become a better player to be able to defeat them in career mode because other oponents are far to easy. For myself I had to quit playing career mode and spend some days training myself on hard mode exhibition matches to improve my style of play.
Regarding the modes and the oponents, hard mode differs extremely from normal mode. You'll easily win normal mode Djockovic 6-0, 6-0, but on hard mode you'll be hard pressed to even win a single game. Seasoned players will have trouble, but will be able to beat them on hard, very hard, or the rediculous "expert" mode. Players like me, who regardless of the experience in gaming cannot always hit a ball at "good" or "perfect" timing will usually lose hard mode battles 0-6, 0-6. The difficulty is ridiculous and frustrating. Difficulty differs per oponent. Andy Roddick for instance is an easy oponent on any mode, while Djockovic, Murray and Agassi are near impossible to beat.
For me hard mode and above, as are the grand slams on normal mode are excruciatingly difficult and take any fun away from career mode.
Difficulty aside, when playing couch co-op doubles, the games difficuly switches and becomes fun and challenging. Playing together is what makes the game a lot more fun. You can play offline doubles against two computer players or online singles against one other human player. Online matches however demand each player is human, so playing doubles with only 2 players cannot be done online. In fact doubles online require that the players playing on the same side are actually on the same console. 2K games explained that the reason for this is the performance dip when connecting more than 2 gaming systems online. They forgot that some people might like to play doubles online on the same side against 2 computer players. This is not possible however so you'll be hard pressed to actually find an online doubles match.
The game has a few noticable downsides. The steep learning curve, the steep increase in difficulty are two, but the fact you can only create 4 characters means you'll be doing a lot of deleting and recreating when trying out different setups. This limitation is incredibly annoying. Still, one of the biggest problems with the game is most likely the loading times. No that came out wrong. I meant to say loooooaaaaaadiiiiiing tiiiiiiimeeeeeees. Each button you hit in a menu gives you a 10-40 second loading screen. Even when creating your character selecting a new option gives you a 5 second load. My guess is on average when playing you'll be spending 70% time playing and 30% time waiting for some loading screen. No joke. On the upside, the game is highly addictive and keeps you coming back for more.
So in the end Top Spin 4 is a great tennis game, with a few noticable flaws. It's too easy on lower difficulties and too hard on higher difficulties. It looks and plays great however and is good fun playing together with friends.