![]() ![]() The different coaches offers specific bonuses – say better returns or killer volley shots – once you complete various objectives. Different coaches offer up their services as you advance up the world-rankings and complete specific goals, like winning 3 minor tournaments or having 5,000 fans. Practice enough with your slice or your top spin shots and you will find yourself effortlessly painting the lines and leaving your opponent wrong-footed and stumbling. Gone are the clunky controls of Top Spin 3 – the new control system is buttery smooth, especially once your character gets good enough to generate some serious heat on the ball. Grand Slam events are best of 3 sets, 3 games to a set.) Fortunately your opponents tend to be equally bad in the early rounds and you will improve rapidly, especially since the “minor” and “major” tournaments are determined by a super tie-break system (first player to reach ten points win the match. In career mode, where you create a character and try and advance up the world rankings, you start off pretty slow and you will shank lots of easy shots, much like in Top Spin 3. I’m happy to report it’s (mostly) the latter. Was it going to be another overwrought and ultimately unsatisfying Top Spin 3? Or was I headed to pure virtual tennis nirvana à la Top Spin 2? So when a review copy of Top Spin 4 recently landed on my desk, I greeted it with mixed emotions. ![]() And it was nearly impossible to beat (I eventually became ranked #1 in career mode in Top Spin 3, but that was two years later, when I was housebound for six weeks following knee surgery.) Maybe I was mashing more buttons than I needed too.) Beginner level players moved so slowly it was as though concrete had been poured into their sneakers. I certainly recall it being very difficult to control. (Correction: May have been only one button, but it was certainly "touchy." My memory is foggy on this point, and I no longer own a copy of the game. It took two – or was it three? – button presses to complete a single swing of the racket. The smooth controls of Top Spin 2 were replaced by an incredibly clunky scheme. Top Spin 3 was released in the summer of 2008 and is easily the worst tennis video game I have ever played. ![]() You could learn to play Top Spin 2 in a matter of minutes mastering it took - if not a lifetime - at least a few weeks. ![]() The controls were simple – B button for top spin, X for slice – but subtle variations in timing, racket placement and feet position gave it enormous depth. The 2006 sequel, Top Spin 2, the first of the series published by Take-Two Interactive subsidiary 2K Sports, may have be the best tennis video game ever made. I remember enjoying playing Top Spin, which was a 2003 exclusive from Microsoft Game Studios for the original Xbox, but not much else about it. ![]()
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