Everything you loved about Top Spin is back and made even better. The peerless player-creator is reborn with the powerful Digital Identity that truly puts you in the game. Experience the pro tour in venues that are alive and dynamic with environmental elements that react to your play. Characters are even more stunning with the addition of HD technology and the inclusion of the top players in the world like Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams, Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt and Roger Federer. Create realistic player models and customize them with the highest level of details. Hairstyles, sweatbands, shirts, shorts, shoes, and more allow you to create a player with your look and your style. Silky smooth animations, vibrant colors, and hi-definition technology delivers illustrious depictions of players, stadiums, and crowds bringing tennis to life on the Xbox 360.
With the mess of tennis games on the console, it's a little bit difficult for tennis fans to figure out what to play. To simplify things for this, Top Spin is your premium simulation series, and in my opinion the best option for fans of tennis on the console. There are 3 entries in the series, and I have picked 2 as my favourite as I think it is really quite impressive for a 2006 title. Top spin 3 makes some changes, but some of them not are good ones and over complicate things. Top Spin 4 goes on to make solid improvements and is arguably the best in the series. However, due to the similarity of the three, I decided to rank them together. I really think only the biggest tennis nerds need more than one of these. So what is so good about these games? Well, for a start its a great blend of easy to play but difficult to master. The career mode has an excellent tutorial, interjecting in the gameplay every now and again to teach you a new move. I really enjoyed this approach and found it a lot more fun than them teaching you everything in one boring block. The career starts you as a rookie created character, and each week you will work with your trainer on drills to improve your stats. This progression system is a lot fun and adds some connection with the created player. Most of the training activities are fun minigames that really help you understand the controls and different techniques for getting points. They are simple such as using power to hit a box out of the court, or hitting bowling balls to knock down pins, but quite effecitve and fun too. Once you have built up your stats and can take part in the competition you will find that it's quite hard. You can't just press A and direct the ball, you really need to master different shots and tactics. In this regard, it's quite different from the more arcade style gameplay from titles like virtua tennis. Yet, even as a non-tennis fan, I was willing to put time in to master it and had a lot of fun with it. Even if you are not putting time into the career mode, this style of gameplay is great for 1 on 1 or doubles couch play with your friends and really makes the game stand out. I can definitely reccomend this one to all 360 owners. If you are willing to put a bit of time in, you will get a lot out of this series. If you are picking one up in 2023, while there is some decent progression in the series and some improvements, I think top spin 2 holds up as the best of the bunch, and is definitely the most impressive for its age.
Très fun, dommage que le mode carrière ne dure que 3 ans max