G4TV

No matter how advanced they get — no matter how realistic the physics, no matter how much the players start to look like the real pros — tennis games have always been, and will always be, just really deep versions of Pong. This, however, isn't a bad thing. Sure, the graphics were very basic, and the voice acting was terrible, but thanks to its perfectly calibrated controls, Pong still holds up... despite being older than Mario and Luigi combined.

Unfortunately, this doesn't make Top Spin 3 look very good. Though it has numerous pros, courts, and options — including a player creation section that would make World Of Warcraft jealous — and looks as good as Wimbledon on NBC, it is ultimately undone by the most obvious of gaming mistakes: bad controls.

Easy Come, Easy Go

As with most sports games, Top Spin 3 has a couple basic modes: Exhibition, where you can play a quick match of singles or doubles, alone or with friends; Tournament Mode, where you play such events as The U.S. Open, The Australian Open, and the, uh, Cincinnati Open; Top Spin School, a.k.a. the training levels; Player Creator, where you get to play God; and Options, which here is very important, since it allows you to turn off the awful music that plays over every menu and loading screen.

There's also, of course, a rich Online Mode, where you can not only play ranked and unranked matches and tournaments, both singles and doubles, but you can also engage in a World Tour that will crown an online champion twice a month.

The centerpiece of the game is the Career Mode.  Take the player you already Frankensteined in Player Creator and have them play a series of matches in hopes of going from an Amateur to a Camera Shiller, er World Champion.

God Is In The Details

Augmenting all of these modes is a litany of options. There are nearly forty pros, including such recognizable names as Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, and such old schoolers as Björn Borg, all of whom come with a choice of outfits (and no, none of them are a panda costume…or a bikini). And there are just as many courts from all around the world (U.S., Africa, Japan, Russia...), both clay and grass, and both indoor and outdoor, including such head scratchers as the public courts in Chicago. There's even two in Texas — Westside Drive in Houston and the Texas Arena in Dallas — because when you think tennis, you think Texas.

But nothing exemplifies the options overkill like the Player Creator, which lets you do more with a beard than most games let you do to an entire character. Every aspect of your characters face, from their forehead to their freckles, has multiple modifiers, and you can even tweak them like a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon with the Sculpt tool. Some options are so subtle, however, that you’ll be hard pressed to notice the difference, while others are just ridiculous, such as ladies hairstyle #6, an overly crimped cut that, when done in blue, makes you look like Selma from The Simpsons.

Swing And A Miss

As good, if overwhelming, as all of the above may sound, it's all for naught when you realize that the controls are fundamentally flawed. The game boasts a new control scheme, one that has you holding and releasing the square, circle, or x button to swing, and pushing the left thumbstick to aim. Which may be more realistic, but it still takes a bit of getting used to, even if graduate Magnum Cum Laude from Top Spin School.

Even if you've got the controls down, though, the swinging mechanics are sluggish and unresponsive. When the ball was coming right at Selma, and with the skill level set as low as it would go, she'd still miss, swinging well after the ball flew past her, despite my pushing the button well before the ball was in range. It's almost like you have depth perception problems and need glasses... the one thing they left out of the Player Creator mode.

Oh, and adding insult to injury, if you decide to quit a match because The Simpsons are coming on, it acts as if you forfeited. This makes sense if you're losing 6-1, 6-1, 4-1, but if you’re winning... Though given how difficult it is to hit the ball, even when Sharapova lobs it lightly in your general directly, quitting while you're ahead is the least of your worries with this game.

Review by: Paul Semel