Customer Reviews

Top Spin 2

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you're a tennis fan, then this is definitely a game to get. You have a wide variety of real life stars to choose from, or you can custom design your own to match your playing style.

Your character selection is great - 24 names including Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Andy Roddick, Roger Federer and much more. You can custom create your own character with the hair style and look that matches you.

As you play, you earn stars which you can apply to a variety of skill types. You can buy training and enter in low level tournaments to hone your skills. Sure, some of those beginning tournaments might be on questionable courts with only a few audience members - but once you begin to prove your talents you can work your way up to the larger scale arenas.

I really appreciated the fine detail in each court. You don't start out in large, lush arenas. You start out on concrete courts with cracks, with barely a dozen people watching. Random passer-bys walk or bicycle along the court's edge. Take heart, though - after months of hard work and practice (in game time) you'll be wowing the larger audiences.

My boyfriend used to play tennis quite seriously and was quite impressed with the accuracy of much of the game. The different types of shots actually sound differently. The characters move very fluidly for the most part and react as a real tennis player would. There are stumbles as they chase the ball, racquet spins while they wait for a shot.

They try to give you an "environment feel" with the sound. For example, when you're playing a tournament in Japan you get asian style music. As mentioned, the tennis shot sounds do actually sound like the ball would in various situations. Really, other than that, you get audience clapping. What else do you want to hear in tennis?

If you've never really played tennis before, you might really come to appreciate just how much strategy is involved in a game of tennis. If you're a tennis player, you can really hone your strategic skills by playing this, seeing what works and what doesn't work depending on the court type and situation.

Well recommended!

Top Spin 1 for the original XBOX was probably the game that I played the most, more than Halo 2 even. Top Spin got boring after a while because the customization of players in career midewas too simple with only 4 categories with 14 possible stars to max out and 4 special shots. Now, Top Spin 2 has 11 categories with 60 stars possible to max out and then to upgrade (granted you get stars easier so this doesn't take forever). You also learn "special shots" as the career progresses.

Graphics:
- probably the weakest point of the game. They don't maximize the potential of the 360 and aren't a huge step from Top Spin 1, but they are effective.
-the courts look very nice and react as they should to certain shots
-Only 2 camera angles which is disappointing. The cool mega-close-up angle from Top Spin 1 was also removed so now you have "zoom" and a far camera angle. I suggest using zoom because with the other angle, you move to the other side of the court and the controls are upside down (to make a shot go short, you press forward on the control stick which is the opposite on the other side of the court). Unfortunately, zoom angle isn't available for doubles which is a shame.
-When creating players, it is difficult to make your player look normal if you customize him yourself. Better to select a DNA and make minor changes.

Sound
-Players grunt and you can even customize when they grunt when creating a character

Gameplay
-Some groundstrokes look awkward like one where the player stands in open stance and kind of slaps at the ball
-Even with the vollie skill maxed, players miss extremely easy vollies and overheads. There really isn't a huge advantage to maxing out vollie because, as far as I can tell, have a 10 vollie player is only a little better than a 5 star vollie player. It's a bad idea to sacrifice other important skills for vollie skills
-AI is rather weak all around. I have no problem winning every match without much difficulty except when playing Guillermo Coria (he is kind of like the Michael Chang of this version, but not as bad)
-ability to sim is VERY important so you don't have to waste 15 minutes beating some minor tournament when trying to improve your ranking. Don't, under any circumstance, try to simulate games vs. your rival (some guy from your country who messages you occasionally and makes stupid remarks when you win) because you will lose most of the time. The game doesn't think highly of you vs. most players so you should win a game or two and then simulate the rest of the match once you have "proved your dominance".
-One way to gain stars it to train. It costs money and you get to do mini-games. For instance, you have to hit 3 big balls with shots and try to get them to cross the base line. A problem is presented when one of the big balls bounces funny and is stuck way up front, so you can't really hit it with any shot except for a drop shot. This gets annoying.
-Another problem with the training system is that you HAVE to take the stars rewarded to you when you complete an exercise. For instance, I wanted to add stamina, forehand, and backhand stars to one of my guys. I had him complete the exercise that works on forehand, backhand, and spins. I maxed out my forehand and backhand at 10, but the game made me use the extra stars from the exercise on spins, even though I didn't want to. The only way to prevent this, that I know of, is to purposely fail the exercise so you only get 1 star, and repeat. This makes you lose lots of money though

I feel like I am ragging too much. This really is a terrific game and is very immersive. You will have a great time progressing through your career and making unique players who specialize in different things. I have created 4 players, all very different, and all very fun to play with.

Don't forget, you can play on Live too, singles and doubles!

PROS:
1. Character Design- one of the most fun aspects of the game is creating new characters and designing everything about them right down to the last detail.
2. Inclusion of Pro Characters- finally they added some current stars to a tennis game (Federer, Roddick, Venus, Sharapova, Hewitt, Blake, Davenport)
3. Graphics- some of the best backgrounds and rendering that I've seen in a tennis game
4. Tournaments- you can actually play in real recreations of major tournaments (Australian Open, Wimbledon, US Open, etc)
5. Career Mode- much improved over the original Topspin, with the ability to play on a week to week schedule over the course of several years.
6. Variety in players abilities- I love that you can design all of a characters skill and strenghts and not just a few.

CONS:
1. Player Movement- some of the moves that the players do is a step backwards from the original in terms of realism. Also, what happened to the miss-hits off the racket and blocking serves back from the original?
2. Player Sounds- the grunts from the players are limited and very unrealistic.
3. No More Replay- one of the cool features about the original was being able to watch a good play over in slow motion. Why did they take that away?
4. Serve Return Too Easy- my biggest gripe is that it's way too easy to return difficult serves. There is no way an opponent should be able to swat back a 140mph serve at nearly the same speed.
5. Career Span- the span of a created persons career should be longer than 5 years. Most pros go at least 10 years now (or some even longer).
6. Where are Nadal, Serena, Safin, Clijsters and Henin-Hardenne?

Topspin is an awesome sports game! I had the original and loved it so much that I decided to upgrade when I got the 360. Its a game that can be played by people of all skill levels and the simplicity of the swing types matched to buttons is something that I love. The "A" button is a safe shot and will always be inside the strips, "B" is the Topspin shot, "Y" is the lob shot and "X" is a slice shot. As you get advanced and used to playing the game, you can add in the Right Trigger button with the above shots to do advanced versions of each.

When You start out the game, you have minimal skills and ranked 200th in the world. Each week of the season you can perform one of two or sometimes three actions.

You always have the option of training. This will provide you with a short drill that changes based on type of training and the level. The task ranges from serving to specific areas of the court to knocking over walls and bowling pens. These can be quite fun in themselves and really don't take a lot of time.

The second action you can take is to participate in a tennis tournament. These include small tournaments up to Grand slam events. There are four levels of tournaments and each one gets progressively harder and more rewarding. Some tournaments require your rank to be above a certain level or for you to go through a qualifying round.

The final action isn't always available but is often very beneficial. I have seen challenges from Top Ranked Players, Fund Raisers and even managed to get invited to the National Team for my country! After completing the fund raising challenge, I had the luxury of having a Tennis school named after me and was rewarded with several silver and gold stars! These are used to increase your skills by first adding bronze, then silver and finally gold stars in increments of 10.

As you compete in tournaments, you'll start to achieve rank and earnings. These will also unlock new coaches, sponsors and clothing that you can take advantage of during the course of your career. Coaches allow different levels of training, sponsors offer you rewards for achieving certain milestones etc.

Multiplayer options include 2 player at the console or 2-4 on xbox live. There are doubles matches, singles matches and several variations on tennis for playing with friends called "party games"

All in all this version of Topspin is as good and even better than the original. My only complaint is with the load times as there tends to be quite a bit of load screens in the game.

I highly recommend this game if your remotely interested in tennis!

First off, let me say that I am a huge tennis fan. When I first starting to purchase console systems, I would pluck out every tennis game I could find.

When I finally came upon Top Spin (the original) I was blown away at the gameplan. The graphics were solid, but the movements of the players, their strokes, the stadiums, were amazing!

So when I heard about Top Spin 2, I rushed to get it. Overall, it is a small upgrade to the original, with some really annoying flaws.

Pluses:

Great selection of players, including Venus Williams, Davenport, Sharapova

Stadium design is much improved, you can plan in awesome settings, with great details like fan interactions

Graphics are a better than the original

Single player campaign is very fun

Negatives:

You are forced to use the joystick for movement. This is incredibly annoying, as the original Top Spin allowed you to use the lower pad

Learning curve is very steep. It is MUCH easier to hit balls out of bounds, which is not fun for friends coming over and just picking up the controller and playing. After about 10 minutes, it will get frustrating for a beginner player with no experience.

Summary:

Overall, I will always love all tennis games, but because of the tougher controls, and tough learning curve, this is not the upgrade I was hoping for.

If you are a huge tennis fan, definitely pick it up for the graphics, and stadium settings. If you cannot dedicate a lot of time to this game, or want to play it casually, I would pass, or look for it in the sale bin.

I think the challenge of getting the players to react the way you want them to is half the fun. Good price.

I started out in career mode and the first season was just too difficult and I lost match after match. As someone who knows how to play competive tennis it was near impossible to hit a winner or a passing shot. As I got better it was still hard to hit a good passing shot. After about 2 weeks of playing daily I never had one ace. I got to the point where I could beat players ranked 50 and below with never losing a game, but players ranked 50 or better was impossible they returned every one of my shots. It is a fun game that would make a great rental or if you only want a game that you plan on playing for a week or two. I finally got bored of the game and quit ranked 33rd.

Top Spin 2 has some amazing players with different sets of features. You have Federer who's good but slow to move around, you have hewitt - who's just a great allrounder, you have Roddick who has speed and you have this guy in a yellow or white tee called Costa. Besides some familiar names, the game really does well and has an improved 2 player playback. The computer difficulty level is just right and at hard, it can be very difficult to beat the computer sometimes but soon you will master the top spin.

One of the elementary feature of this particular version of the ever so famous, Top Spin Series, is the use of the top spin button on your stick called B. The game is touch sensitive if you're holding a button for a tad too long or if you're pressing a button softly, you will get the same reaction. What can be annoying about this game in due course of time is the fact that it still does not have replays on a regular basis and the graphics aren't up to the level of football and basketball games but then Top Spin 3 was recently launched.

New features -
a) Longer rallies with more realistic ball control
b) A new well defined series of strokes
c) Better courts, more options
d) More relaxed setting for matches with lesser crowd noise
e) Top Spin 2 had a lesser of an arcade feel than Top Spin did

Now, I must remind the reader that I'm a casual gamer and I game every now and then. My xbox 360 console belongs to me but I got it just because I wanted a console so I don't game very much. This game is well worth purchasing whether you're a fan of tennis or not. The four player can be very cool and entertaining if you're playing doubles although on my own console I haven't tried it yet but I have played doubles on a friend's and it's fun.

Overall, worthy of adding to your collection. Can it be better? Of course, I await a "sensational" tennis game until then Top Spin 2 is my best bet.

If you enjoy tennis and video games, I highly recommend this game. I'm a tennis player and I love this game. The shot selection, directional control, realistic results on a stroke. More difficult shots are harder to pull off. The more time you give your player to set up the shot, the better the shot will be. As with real tennis, placement wins the point; by using good tactics and placement, you can beat higher ranked opponents. The controls are easy to learn but the more difficult/winning strokes require a deft touch and chancy timing.
My only complaints are the camera angles are not great but workable, and sometimes the simulated lighting in the game makes the ball hard to track.

players hitting in no mans land shows how this game is nothing like real tennis.everybody on xbox live hits in no mans land and in the game thats the best way to win points.but in real tennis no mans land is death.you should either be inside the servers box to make a volley or behind the baseline.other problems with this arcade style game you cant get in close to make a big server pay for hitting a huge serve by using his pace off his serve to send back a fast return and come in off it.also players walk backwards which as you know in real tennis players dont take backwards steps.i noticed playing this game on xbox live the best players are always the ones who come from france so on a hunch i looked at the credits at the back of the top spin booklet and sure enough all the names of the people who made this game are french names like pierre and jean claude.coincedence?i think not.this game is a step down from the first one.the quickest player is the one who wins.this game has nothing to do with how to construct a point and work a point using your tennis brain like smashcourt tennis 2 does.it just matters if you have speed.the fastest player wins.the graphics are great but great graphics dont mean a great game.if you wanna play a great tennis game that stays true to real tennis i recommend smashcourt tennis 2.top spin 2 is too arcade like and players are too fast and run down everything.in this game they make it so power is the way to win and in real tennis power isnt the way to win.edberg beat players who were much more powerful than him with the volley which takes away speed and power.but on this game you cant do it thats why everybody online stays at the baseline.not one person serves and volleys in this game online.i just hope when smashcourt tennis 3 comes out it isnt a dissapointment like this sequel was.