Top Spin 2 Review - Xbox 360

7

Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 8
Audio: 8
Multiplayer: 6
Innovation: 4

Top Spin was by far a revolutionary tennis title for the original Xbox. Tennis fans played the game day in day out, traveling around the globe (in career mode) to compete in all sorts of tournaments and become the world number one. Top Spin 2 launched alongside the Xbox 360 console, and may have received less coverage than it deserved. With the third Top Spin already in the works, is Top Spin 2 a hit or a miss? Read on to find out.

Gameplay

Join all your favourite tennis stars such as Hewitt, Blake, Federer, Coria, Williams, Davenport, Sharapova and much more in an all new Top Spin. The Xbox 360 definitely didn’t have a game as amazing as Halo: Combat Evolved when it launched, but it definitely did have a vast range of great looking games that are designed to last for quite a while. Oblivion, Project Gotham 3, Dead or Alive 4 and Top Spin 2 are the four big games that come to mind when the Xbox 360 console launch is spoken of, and Top Spin 2 was the only game in that list that we haven’t given a serious go, so we decided to rent the game from the local store to see if it lives up to its awesome predecessor. And well, it does… kind of.

Top Spin 2 has a whole new career mode layout that’s relatively innovative but probably not an upgrade from the original game. You start off at the bottom of the ranks at rank 200 (which we think is pretty damn fine… 200^th in the whole world? Not a bad way to begin…) where you must build up your character from scratch. You begin with basic training in different fields to increase different skills such as your serve, power, speed, forehand, backhand, spin, precision and more. There is such a vast range of skills to level up in that it’s almost overwhelming, and you can never max out all the skills either, making the skills you completely master all that more important.

Every fortnight you can choose from three different events, either training, a tournament, or a special event such as a charity match or an unranked tournament for extra cash or representing your country. All the famous tournaments are included in the game, with all the well known courts including the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. As you battle your way through the tournaments, your rank slowly increases which allows you to compete in the larger tournaments and eventually the four grand slams, Wimbledon, the US Open, French Open and Australian Open, that we all watch on TV.

There are two separate ranks, one official World Rank, and then there’s a Race Rank which resets yearly and doesn’t really count towards (continued next page)