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The beauty of tennis is that it can be enjoyed on many levels. On one level, it's pretty easy. Hit the ball back and forth over a net. Add a little practice and you realize it's about position because the sooner you get to the ball the easier it is to hit a good shot. Then you realize the more you influence your opponent's position, the better your chances. Before you know it you're getting into spins, lobs, charging the net and so on. But that doesn't change the fact that all you really have to do is hit the ball over the net. Top Spin 3 has a steep learning curve for the most fundamental aspect of tennis - hitting the ball. The player must hit a button to begin a windup and release it to swing. The instruction from the tutorial suggests the right time is about when it hits the ground on the first bounce. That's it. Sounds simple. But something about this mechanic is extremely difficult to execute and completely unnatural. It can be learned, but it takes a lot of patience and practice learning to hit routine shots. Until the player has retrained themselves to make a completely foreign timing mechanism second nature, he or she is going to lose a lot. It won't be because of incredible shots by a gifted opponent (CPU or otherwise). It will just be because hitting the ball is very difficult and for no apparent reason. This learning curve doesn't even take into account the combinations and timing required to aim for the line or put the ball in a certain location.
Serving, however, is very easy. The timing for that stroke isn't very particular and the shot can be placed fairly consistently. It's rare, however, that you'll see a serve hard enough or effective enough to be up to the standards of modern tennis. Returns are much easier in Top Spin 3 than they are in real life. But after figuring all that out, a lot of great tennis awaits. The game looks great. The players move well, their clothes move, the settings are gorgeous and there are a lot of them. You can play through a lengthy career mode or online in singles and doubles matches. There are some disappointing player omissions, like the absence of Rafael Nadal except in the PS3 version and lack of Ana Ivanovic in any version, but the players included look fantastic. Visually, it's a new high for video game tennis. There are very few on-screen cues to the game - no meters of any kind. The only indication of the game's mechanics are heart rate monitors that give you an idea how out of breath you are between points. Otherwise, it's a very organic presentation which makes the game about timing and feel, which is a refreshing change. Top Spin 3 looks great and offers a deep game for anyone willing to dig into it and learn it. But the incredibly steep expectations at the beginning of the learning experience won't be worth it to those looking for a quick game of video tennis. This is not a pick-up-and-play game.
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