Top Spin

Since the release of the tennis game by Nintendo for its NES 8 bit system sometime in the mid 80s, there has not been an entertaining nor worthy tennis video game until Top Spin for the XBox. I have tried several of them on various consoles. Despite the graphics and engine improvements, they were not fun and failed miserbly in grabbing my attention. This is certainly not the case for Top Spin; it is surprisingly addictive even if you do not take advantage of its online feature. The gameplay is very smooth and realistic. You really do feel as if you were playing tennis. The AI is challenging. There are several game modes available: exhibition, multiplayer, custom tournament, and career. In single player, you will most likely spend most of your time in the career mode. The career mode is very robust from character creation, training, to shopping for gears and competing in various tournaments. You can create almost an identical copy of yourself in character creation. It is that good! The graphics and sound are superb. This game could have been one of the best games ever made if there weren't a few minor annoying details. The frequency of loading required to jump around the game is too much. The loading could have been minimized or at least optimized. But unnecessary loading times are all forgiven because the gameplay and graphics are that good.
Top Spin is one of the most overlooked titles for the XBox. The best feature of this game is of course getting online to test your skills against other players. You can take your character you created from career mode to compete against the best Top Spinners in the world. Now, that is challenging.
This is a must buy for all XBox owners even if you are not a tennis fan. I got my copy for $29.99 which is a bargain for such a great game.

Rating: 9.0 out of 10

XBox Top Spin Page

IGN Top Spin Review