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Platform: PlayStation 2
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Publisher: 2K Sports
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Developer: Pam Development
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Medium: DVD-ROM
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Players: 1 - 2
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Online: Yes
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Also on: (n/a)
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This port didn't weather the test of time.
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All of its life, the gaming industry has had a not-so secret crush on the sport of tennis. 1958 saw William A. Higinbotham creating the first videogame, Tennis For Two out of realization that people weren’t as interested in the stationary exhibits of Brookhaven National Laboratory as they might be with something interactive. The oscilloscope-based game was a wild success. Ralph Baer and Bob Tremblay worked together in 1966 to make a system that would move dots around on a television screen. In Baer’s hands, It evolved into the world-renowned Pong. Cut to the present, and you’ll find Top Spin for the Playstation 2.
To its credit, Top Spin is probably the deepest game out there when it comes to shot selection as nearly every button gives you another option in a myriad of ways to hit the ball. Every swing has an individual animation (a very nice touch), and the ball travels realistically to the kind of hit you throw at it.
Graphics in general are a major step back from the Xbox version, which is somewhat expected. However, the sacrifice in animation and visual quality make the game a bit hard on the eyes. Animations are somewhat jerky, reminding one of early Playstation 2 Madden, with models that don’t look much better. Textures are blurry and muddied all over, which amazingly even extends to the highly compressed loading screen images.
Much like The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s seminal Dark Side of the Moon, this review was synched up with Top Spin PS2. If you started reading this at the beginning of a load time, you’d be in the game right about… now. In an hour of Top Spin, you can expect to have about ten minutes of loading in total from start to the hour point. Alternately, if you start up career mode, you can probably double that—as even changing hairstyles brings up a second or two of load time. Moreso, the loading screens in career mode only annoy due to their inscription of “helpful hints.” The “helpful hint” screen changes about once every two seconds, meaning that if you don’t read and comprehend at about 1200 wpm, you’re out of luck.
Character creation has gone through a notable change since the Xbox version, thanks to the Eyetoy. Take a picture of yourself with the Eyetoy, map it onto your character, and then you can see the product of your attempt. Mapping a custom face is fine and dandy, but sometimes the end result reminds you more of Sloth than yourself. Otherwise, Top Spin has a fully featured create-a-character mode that lives up to standards EA Sports set with its own games.
On the audio side, Top Spin is a relative disappointment. Very little ambient noise from the crowd at any level (even in the biggest stadiums) makes up the cold, barren soundscape that is Top Spin. Crowd noise is only penetrated by a bark from a judge of “out!” or a robotic canned voice saying the score. Top Spin really could have benefited from a proper announcer, or at least some sort of music in the background.
With all that in mind, Top Spin really shines in multiplayer. Although there’s a steep learning curve inherent with the game at first, matches at any level can become intense. Long games can soon become a measure of not who’s the best player but rather who can keep their side up the longest. It’s impressive in this sense, of which the single player with its easily faked out AI can’t even start to replicate.
If the writers of history characterized each tennis game as an inscription of “tennis” on a sheet of paper, you would seem some are crudely scribed, some done in calligraphy, and a poor photocopy would be shown as Top Spin PS2. If you’re really hard-up for tennis on the PS2 and have a few friends to play with online or off, go for it. If you don’t fit the prior statement, don’t even bother.
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