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When 2K's Top Spin 2 was released for the 360 in March of 2006 the game immediately felt broken to me, a veteran with countless hours logged with the first Top Spin (then developed by Microsoft's in house sports team) on Xbox. Something felt amiss and that left me feeling betrayed. Eventually a time came when there was nothing else to play so I popped it back in to see if I missed something along the way. I came to know the slightly different feel and eventually ended up spending a fair amount of time with it until the game started to outpace how fast my career character was advancing his talents. I was trying to play at a higher level than my player would allow based on his skill point distribution and I ended up in a loop with no satisfying solution.
2K decided to go back, strip the game down and rebuild it. They've revamped the look, presentation, career system, online play and most notably the controls. How did they fare? Hit the jump, open up that new can of balls (not that kind Jimmy!) and getting ready to return serve.
Though there are other basic modes present in the game, most of your time will be spent upping the skill of your character and all that starts in the player creation tool. If there were more preset choices for hair I might be inclined to call this the most robust creation system I've ever used for one simple reason: face sculpting. You're basically getting a mini version of Maya or 3Dmax in the game. When you select sculpting your character appears with different key points on a grid overlay of the model. You can then go in and basically make something that looks like you if you take enough time. Since I was so anxious to get in to the action I didn't try to make me but I was very impressed with this feature. It's quite possible that other games before this one have utilized a tool similar to this but it was the first time I've encountered anything in a game close to it.
Maybe even before you create a character you should spend a good hour or two going through all the lessons in Top Spin School to learn the new mechanics of the game. I found it to be essential since my hands experience severe muscle memory with this franchise. Actually, I think every person who picks this game up needs to go through every tutorial the game has to offer. I was probably five or six hours and 25+ matches in to my career before I finally felt comfortable with the new controls.
 In the old Top Spins, and almost every tennis game I've ever played for that matter, you simply hold the button down that corresponds to what kind of hit you want to throw out there (flat, top spin, slice or lob) and as the ball approaches your character automatically swings. Not so much anymore. Now you still hold down the button but you have to time a release of the button in order to swing. For volleys you need to correctly time a quick press of one of the buttons. Doesn't sound that much different but trust me, this through me for quite a loop.
They've also incorporated the right stick as an option for serving and hitting drop shots or lobs. For service you pull the right stick back and then flick it up at the correct time. There's a similar mechanic for drops and lobs. I'm a huge fan of the right stick for serving but my drops and lobs still need work. Sensing a theme here? Top Spin 3 is all about being in the right place and hitting the ball at the right time in order to be successful. Once you get a handle on this concept and the mechanics the game really takes off. It's the working and fighting with the game that will leave some very frustrated and not wanting to go on.
 Your career mode starts off easy enough with the Amateur and Challenger levels being fairly simple to get through. Once you get to the Junior level you're faced with a twelve month calendar and two options for tournaments each month, easy and hard (though you can only pick one for the month, you can't play both). You'll really want to pick easy for your first run through Junior since you have to place in the top 3 to move on to Pro by accumulating points in the tournaments. Of course you get more points the better you do in each tournament and for the difficulty on which you play them. To be clear choosing either easy or hard does not change the AI difficulty level, just the overall tournament. On my first run through Junior I only won maybe two tournaments while I got knocked out in the first round of more than I'd like to admit. As you advance and win games your character garners xp to be applied to your different skills. Like season points the better you play and the more games you win the more xp you receive.
Taking the game online you'll find that if you want to play in the ranked competition you'll have to use a custom created character. Here it is possible to use your career character since they will gather xp just like playing offline and the skills translate to both. In the few online matches I had a chance to play I found there to be some stuttering generally jaggedness in a few of the matches. I'd like to say that it doesn't affect the gameplay but in a game that's all about timing it's bad for the ball to stutter while it's coming at you. This wasn't the case in every match but it seems that some more optimization wouldn't have hurt. There are different tournaments to compete in as you accumulate season points that place you on the leaderboards.
 For those who just want to jump in and play against some pros there are seven female pros (including Maria Sharapova, Justine Henin and annoying grunt pioneer Monica Seles) and twelve male pros (Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, James Blake and Björn Borg) to choose from. I would have liked to have seen a wider selection but for what's there it's a decent mix of new and old (but where's Rafa?!?).
Top Spin 3 is challenging and unyielding at times and there are numerous situations where you'll be cursing the controls and AI. If you're a fan of the series leading up to this I'd definitely try out the demo or rent a copy before you plunk down the money for the full title. The game rewards you if you're willing to put the time in to learn the game and build up a created character worth playing online since you'll find what amounts to possibly the best tennis simulation game I've ever played. Game, set, match.
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