Amazon.com: Top Spin 2: Xbox 360: Video Games

20 Reviews

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
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4.1 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Tennis Game, May 16, 2006

By	Lisa Shea "LisaShea.com" - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

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!

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terric. Must-have for any tennis fan, May 11, 2006

By	Scott (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

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!

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best tennis game out there, but could still be improved..., November 3, 2006

By	captainbryce (NYC!) - See all my reviews

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

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?