The National Football League has “NFL 2K5.” Baseball has “MLB: The Show 2008.” College football has “NCAA 04.” And tennis now has “Top Spin 3.”

2K Sports and developer PAM have created the most realistic and engrossing tennis sim to ever grace a console. No other game has even come close to capturing what it feels like to actually play tennis the way “Top Spin 3″ has.

Gone are the days of scripted rallies and cheap AI. In “Top Spin 3,” exchanges between players are tense, dramatic affairs. And never once did I feel as though the outcome of a point was predetermined. When I lost a point, I knew it was because I made a mistake. And when I hit a winner down the line, I knew it was because I made a great shot. More than once, I found myself pumping my fist in celebration and mumbling to myself after failing to put away an easy backhand. I’ve never been this caught up in a tennis game.

But just like the real sport, “Top Spin 3″ has a definite learning curve. Don’t expect to jump right in and challenge the Federers and Roddicks of the world. “Top Spin 3″ features a new control scheme that sounds complicated at first, but with a little patience soon becomes second-nature.

In a nutshell, instead of simply pressing a button to hit a shot, you hold down one of the face buttons while running to the ball and release the button to swing. Each button corresponds to a type of shot and the longer you hold the button, the more pace (or spin) you put on the ball.

You aim your shots using the left analog stick, which also controls player movement. If you’re running to your right and want to smack a cross-court forehand, you’ll need to flick the stick to the left just before you release the button to swing.

Sound easy enough? Trust me, it’s not. The controls are likely to turn away some gamers who are just looking for “Pong” with a racket. It is for this reason that I highly recommend taking the time to go through the Tennis School tutorial and familiarize yourself with the new controls.

“Top Spin 3″ features only a handful of professionals from both the men’s and women’s tours. Big names like Roger Federer, Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova are here, along with legends Boris Becker, Bjorn Borg and Monica Seles.(If you’re torn between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, Rafael Nadal is exclusively on the PS3 edition.) A wider selection of players would have been nice, but I understand that obtaining licenses for a tennis game is a lot different than it is for any of the major team sports.

The traditional array of game modes are here, including a career mode in which you create a player and take them up the ladder beginning on the junior circuit. The create-a-player is one of the better ones I’ve seen in a sports game, but you can’t adjust your player’s skills from the outset. If you want to create an accurate Andre Agassi or Pete Sampras, be prepared to take them through the career mode to build up their stats. This is really one of the few knocks I have with the game as a whole, which is saying something.

Visually, “Top Spin 3″ looks fantastic. The player models for the pros are spot-on (for the most part) and the generic players you encounter in early tournaments look good, as well. The new Evolutionary Visuals engine allows for players to sweat, show fatigue and get dirty as a match progresses. Any pre-or post-match presentation is pretty much non-existant. With the gameplay about as close to perfect as it can get, hopefully the developers work on improving the presentation for next year — a studio show to kick off each tournament, perhaps?

Even without a bunch of bells and whistles, “Top Spin 3″ is the pinnacle of tennis video games. If you’re a fan of the sport, this simply is a must-own.

Score: 8.6/10

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.