Top Spin 2
Posted April 27, 2006
When the first Top Spin was released for the original Xbox, the acclaimed Virtua Tennis became but an afterthought while Top Spin quickly became top dog within the genre. Much of the praise for Top Spin went to the wonderful work of developer, Power & Magic. Fast forward 2.5 years and Indie Built has brought us Top Spin 2, supposedly designed to take advantage of the power in the Xbox 360. Needless to say, I was curious to see if the butchers of the Amped series had picked up their cleaver once again to hack away at my beloved Top Spin. 
The presentation is similar to the lackluster effort put forth by the rest of the 2K Sports library for the Xbox 360. The utilitarian menus show no artistic value nor do they appropriately pay homage to the game of tennis. In addition, the menu load time between games is incredibly lengthy. It is apparent Indie Built spent little time optimizing Top Spin's load times for the 360 hardware. It felt like I spent more time watching loading screens than I did playing tennis.
Gameplay:
For those unfamiliar with the series, Top Spin 2 incorporates a variety of professional tennis stars along with a handful of venues to create a challenging tennis simulation. There are three main game modes, which include career, exhibition, and Xbox Live online play. In addition, there are a variety of mini-games and an expansive create-a-player mode similar to what's found in other 2K Sports games. The game supports up to four players, which allows for doubles matches with your buds. Also, the game doesn't place any restriction against mixed gender matches. So, you are free to pit Maria Sharapova against Roger Federer for the ultimate Battle of the Sexes exhibition match.
The career mode is the true meat of the game. After deciding on a character design for your male/female tennis star, the game opens up into the career schedule. Each week, you have a choice between completing training, playing in a tournament, or competing in a special event. Training involves a vast number of mini-games that get progressively harder as you start to gain stars. The stars govern how good a player is at a particular skill. Also, the stars come in three different levels (bronze, silver, & gold) with 60 stars available at each level. Each training task covers a range of three skill categories. For instance, working on serving will improve power, stamina, and reflex. If your character plateaus with their training in a particular category, you can fire your coach and hire a coach more suited to your training needs.
Stars can also be earned when competing in the other two events for the week. Winning a Minor, Major, or Masters tournament will significantly boost your ranking as well as award your player a few stars, usually silver or gold. Raising your rank will obviously elevate the level of competition, but the reward will rise as well. Special events can range from charity matches, grudge matches, or tournaments of the top ranks. The advantage to skipping training or an official tournament to compete in a special event is usually an immense number of silver and gold stars. A couple of these events during your career can elevate your skills dramatically.
The career mode isn't without flaws, though. The saving system is the worst I've seen in any sports title. Basically, everything is auto-saved after any event. If you make a mistake in training, you can't reload a save to take another crack at it. Also, saving during tournament play is unavailable. You can manually save between each round, but it annoyingly forces you to quit the career and reload everything. The programmer at Indie Built that created this imbecilic save system deserves to be flogged.
Xbox Live play can be quite entertaining after you have completed career mode. If you attempt to play against ranked opponents before completing career mode, prepare to lose many matches. The majority of Top Spin online players have completed their career which maxes out their skills with gold stars. From my fifty matches, the online play is mostly lag free. Occasionally, you may get matched up with a bad connection, but it doesn't happen too often. Unfortunately, you cannot invite a friend to a ranked game. You are able to browse through all the open games, but spots usually fill up faster than you can connect. Online play seems to be very competitive and people stick around even if they are losing. This partly has to do with people getting a loss if they quit at any time during the match.
Playing through all of these modes successfully requires an extensive knowledge of the controls. As you progress through the game, shot selection becomes much more advanced and difficult to master. For instance, powered up versions of slice, lob, and top spin shots are available once you build up enough momentum during a match. These shots are exponentially riskier than their basic counterparts, but the reward is great. It's much easy to take out an opponent quickly with a fast cross-court slice rather than a lengthy battle of standard shots. Unfortunately, the controls do have some technical faults. Resulting from poor shot detection, you can mash buttons sometimes and nothing will happen. This is especially prevalent when the computer performs a lob shot. It's next to impossible to line-up an overhead return successfully.
While the A.I. doesn't lob the ball very often, they do enjoy watching you run back and forth across the court. The A.I. becomes extremely stringent in the later stages of the career. Also, Indie Built did an excellent job molding the specific playstyles to the appropriate star. For instance, Federer will use his serving ability and overall power to run all over the court while Sharapova will use a variety of skill shots and net charges to eliminate her opponents. During every Master's tournament, it's nice to see challenging A.I. that forces adaptation each round.
The achievements are broken up over 11 tasks for 1000 gamerscore points. The points are split about 80% / 20% between single player & multiplayer challenges with the vast majority requiring dedication to completing the career mode. Frankly, I'm surprised a 2K Sports game had such challenging achievements, as it's the first time. Collecting all of the points will take approximately 20 to 25 hours of game time, depending if you choose a female or a male in career mode. Indie Built did an excellent job setting up an achievement structure worthy of bragging about upon completion.
Graphics:
Similar to the blurry nature of Amped 3, Indie Built continues their pursuit of graphical mediocrity in Top Spin 2. Even in high definition, the arenas look like they belong on the Xbox instead of the 360. Additionally, the vapid audience and the bland environment only add to the unstimulating visual experience. The player models look moderately similar to their real life counterparts, but the lack of specific detail and the plastic sheen off their skin is annoying. On a positive note, the player animations are vastly smooth and the framerate stays fairly rock solid.
I do have a bone to pick with the camera angles. There are only two angles to choose from, far and zoom. Far is the obvious choice due to a wider range of vision, but flipping to the opposite side between sets becomes troublesome. Zoom stays locked behind your character regardless of set position, but the angle leaves much to be desired when attempting to move into position for an opponent's shot. The developers should have included a wider range of camera choices to accommodate various styles of play.
Audio:
Unlike other 2K Sports games, the music selection for Top Spin 2 is minimal and inadequate. The only menu tune is catchy the first few times, but it becomes dreadfully monotonous hours into the game. Load up your own tunes and leave the midi jingle untouched on the game disc. The sound effects are effective, although sparse. Grunting during a player's serve, referee score announcements, and audience reactions are all appropriate to the nature of the sport. There is no commentary to speak of since the sport doesn't require it.
Conclusion:
Top Spin 2 is a hodgepodge of good and bad game elements. On one hand, the gameplay is quite expansive and the achievements actually feel like an accomplishment. On the other, the load times are next to unbearable, the save system is frustrating, and the graphical quality leaves much to be desired. While I should probably be glad Indie Built didn't produce another dud, Top Spin 2 still leaves me a bit unsatisfied and longing for the original.
It's tough to recommend purchase of this title at full price, even though it debuted at a 33% reduction in MSRP than the rest of the 360 library. For Top Spin fans, wait for this title to hit the $25 range before picking it up. Everyone else should give it a rent if interested in the sports genre.
The presentation is similar to the lackluster effort put forth by the rest of the 2K Sports library for the Xbox 360. The utilitarian menus show no artistic value nor do they appropriately pay homage to the game of tennis. In addition, the menu load time between games is incredibly lengthy. It is apparent Indie Built spent little time optimizing Top Spin's load times for the 360 hardware. It felt like I spent more time watching loading screens than I did playing tennis.
Gameplay:
For those unfamiliar with the series, Top Spin 2 incorporates a variety of professional tennis stars along with a handful of venues to create a challenging tennis simulation. There are three main game modes, which include career, exhibition, and Xbox Live online play. In addition, there are a variety of mini-games and an expansive create-a-player mode similar to what's found in other 2K Sports games. The game supports up to four players, which allows for doubles matches with your buds. Also, the game doesn't place any restriction against mixed gender matches. So, you are free to pit Maria Sharapova against Roger Federer for the ultimate Battle of the Sexes exhibition match.
The career mode is the true meat of the game. After deciding on a character design for your male/female tennis star, the game opens up into the career schedule. Each week, you have a choice between completing training, playing in a tournament, or competing in a special event. Training involves a vast number of mini-games that get progressively harder as you start to gain stars. The stars govern how good a player is at a particular skill. Also, the stars come in three different levels (bronze, silver, & gold) with 60 stars available at each level. Each training task covers a range of three skill categories. For instance, working on serving will improve power, stamina, and reflex. If your character plateaus with their training in a particular category, you can fire your coach and hire a coach more suited to your training needs.
Stars can also be earned when competing in the other two events for the week. Winning a Minor, Major, or Masters tournament will significantly boost your ranking as well as award your player a few stars, usually silver or gold. Raising your rank will obviously elevate the level of competition, but the reward will rise as well. Special events can range from charity matches, grudge matches, or tournaments of the top ranks. The advantage to skipping training or an official tournament to compete in a special event is usually an immense number of silver and gold stars. A couple of these events during your career can elevate your skills dramatically.
The career mode isn't without flaws, though. The saving system is the worst I've seen in any sports title. Basically, everything is auto-saved after any event. If you make a mistake in training, you can't reload a save to take another crack at it. Also, saving during tournament play is unavailable. You can manually save between each round, but it annoyingly forces you to quit the career and reload everything. The programmer at Indie Built that created this imbecilic save system deserves to be flogged.
Xbox Live play can be quite entertaining after you have completed career mode. If you attempt to play against ranked opponents before completing career mode, prepare to lose many matches. The majority of Top Spin online players have completed their career which maxes out their skills with gold stars. From my fifty matches, the online play is mostly lag free. Occasionally, you may get matched up with a bad connection, but it doesn't happen too often. Unfortunately, you cannot invite a friend to a ranked game. You are able to browse through all the open games, but spots usually fill up faster than you can connect. Online play seems to be very competitive and people stick around even if they are losing. This partly has to do with people getting a loss if they quit at any time during the match.
Playing through all of these modes successfully requires an extensive knowledge of the controls. As you progress through the game, shot selection becomes much more advanced and difficult to master. For instance, powered up versions of slice, lob, and top spin shots are available once you build up enough momentum during a match. These shots are exponentially riskier than their basic counterparts, but the reward is great. It's much easy to take out an opponent quickly with a fast cross-court slice rather than a lengthy battle of standard shots. Unfortunately, the controls do have some technical faults. Resulting from poor shot detection, you can mash buttons sometimes and nothing will happen. This is especially prevalent when the computer performs a lob shot. It's next to impossible to line-up an overhead return successfully.
While the A.I. doesn't lob the ball very often, they do enjoy watching you run back and forth across the court. The A.I. becomes extremely stringent in the later stages of the career. Also, Indie Built did an excellent job molding the specific playstyles to the appropriate star. For instance, Federer will use his serving ability and overall power to run all over the court while Sharapova will use a variety of skill shots and net charges to eliminate her opponents. During every Master's tournament, it's nice to see challenging A.I. that forces adaptation each round.
The achievements are broken up over 11 tasks for 1000 gamerscore points. The points are split about 80% / 20% between single player & multiplayer challenges with the vast majority requiring dedication to completing the career mode. Frankly, I'm surprised a 2K Sports game had such challenging achievements, as it's the first time. Collecting all of the points will take approximately 20 to 25 hours of game time, depending if you choose a female or a male in career mode. Indie Built did an excellent job setting up an achievement structure worthy of bragging about upon completion.
Graphics:
Similar to the blurry nature of Amped 3, Indie Built continues their pursuit of graphical mediocrity in Top Spin 2. Even in high definition, the arenas look like they belong on the Xbox instead of the 360. Additionally, the vapid audience and the bland environment only add to the unstimulating visual experience. The player models look moderately similar to their real life counterparts, but the lack of specific detail and the plastic sheen off their skin is annoying. On a positive note, the player animations are vastly smooth and the framerate stays fairly rock solid.
I do have a bone to pick with the camera angles. There are only two angles to choose from, far and zoom. Far is the obvious choice due to a wider range of vision, but flipping to the opposite side between sets becomes troublesome. Zoom stays locked behind your character regardless of set position, but the angle leaves much to be desired when attempting to move into position for an opponent's shot. The developers should have included a wider range of camera choices to accommodate various styles of play.
Audio:
Unlike other 2K Sports games, the music selection for Top Spin 2 is minimal and inadequate. The only menu tune is catchy the first few times, but it becomes dreadfully monotonous hours into the game. Load up your own tunes and leave the midi jingle untouched on the game disc. The sound effects are effective, although sparse. Grunting during a player's serve, referee score announcements, and audience reactions are all appropriate to the nature of the sport. There is no commentary to speak of since the sport doesn't require it.
Conclusion:
Top Spin 2 is a hodgepodge of good and bad game elements. On one hand, the gameplay is quite expansive and the achievements actually feel like an accomplishment. On the other, the load times are next to unbearable, the save system is frustrating, and the graphical quality leaves much to be desired. While I should probably be glad Indie Built didn't produce another dud, Top Spin 2 still leaves me a bit unsatisfied and longing for the original.
It's tough to recommend purchase of this title at full price, even though it debuted at a 33% reduction in MSRP than the rest of the 360 library. For Top Spin fans, wait for this title to hit the $25 range before picking it up. Everyone else should give it a rent if interested in the sports genre.