Bizzaro Universe table tennis: where white boys have a chance against players from China
Apparently, Table Tennis is quite popular on a world-wide scale, and was the most viewed sport at the last Olympic games, although this is obviously helped by it's popularity in China, where we've heard quite a few people live. Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis takes an arcade approach to the sport, while adding a healthy dose of advanced ball physics that they claim were not possible without next-gen power. There are only four modes: Training, Exhibition, Tournament, and Online, no fancy stuff here. You pick a character, select an arena and then you're into the game. There are real sponsors and logos in the game, but the eleven characters, both male and female, are entirely fictional, and each represents a different country. They of course all have different attributes based on speed and power ratings, and it's pretty obvious from their appearance which one will be the power guy or the speed guy etc. We saw several different arenas in the demo we played, and while they all looked suitably different, it didn't really make much difference, in the way different surfaces do in a tennis game.
Some of the 'ladies' may have had a few too many power bars.
As you'd expect, it feels and plays a lot like a standard tennis video game. You move around with the left stick, and as you hit a ball it controls your aim. The four face buttons are your shots: A for your basic shot, X and B for left and right spin respectively, and Y for back spin. In an interesting twist, all shots are also mapped to the right stick, and more advanced shot options are available with this control method, since you can combine, say, back and left spin in any ratio by hitting a diagonal. This may add another layer of depth to the controls for experts, but it's quite tricky to use. Holding the button (or stick) down for longer before you release increases the shot's power, but also locks you to the spot, and this is one of the key gameplay differences to a traditional tennis game – to win a point you must read your opponent and anticipate the shot you must return. The right shoulder button can be used in conjunction with a shot button to add 'focus' to a shot, which basically adds extra power. Focus is built up and stored in much the same way a super meter is in a SNK or Capcom fighting game (by getting some shots in), and is depleted as you hold the button ready for that killer return. Finally the left shoulder makes any shot a drop shot, for those times you want to suck power from the ball's movement.
The player models are quite detailed
While it plays a lot like the type of tennis game we've been playing since the NES, there are a few things that make Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis a bit different from your Virtua Tennis and Top Spin type games. First and most obviously is that it is a different sport being represented. The scoring is different, and first to eleven is actually more forgiving then real tennis' scoring system, since you can come back more easily. Serves are much less of an advantage, and it's also easier to recover after lunging for a shot. It's a much smaller court size, which if nothing else increases the speed of the game, and it's also much easier to hit most balls, since you player has more reach, so rallies tend to go on for more shots, and are won by that one killer return, rather then a more drawn out build up of position. However, since it's still a game where you move around with a controller and press A to hit the ball, Table Tennis has much more in common with Virtua Tennis then real tennis does with real table tennis. Another important difference is that spin plays a much more dramatic role in table tennis, and with the power of a new CPU, Rockstar have managed to put together a physics engine that allows for a huge variety of ball movement on both the table and off the paddles. The ball is constantly curving and slicing just like in real life, and while spin indicators have been added to the ball in the form of coloured arrows (corresponding to the button colour for that spin), you'll have to learn to read your opponent to handle some of the more subtle angles.
Game! Anyone for a cup of Hot Coffee?
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis defintely looks like a next gen title. The player models and arenas are up to the level of Fight Night Round 3 on the Xbox 360, with swaying clothes and floppy ponytails, and the players get sweat stains and different expressions on their' faces as a game wears on. Much like Fight Night, the animations can be a bit off, and the fancy new graphics show them up like a bad editor in a Michal Bay film – watch that idle animation snap into a shot animation with the flick of a button. Sonically it seems to be shaping up decently, the sound effects are fine, and when a rally gets going some sports-broadcast style music starts pumping, but that's about it. We didn't get to see the online options, so we'll have to wait for the game's release to see how well it works, but we were promised it would be fully featured.
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis seems to be everything we'd expect from a Table Tennis game. With no fancy features like 'create a player' or 'make your own rules', and no real players or popular events (so you can't re-create “Wimbledon '98” or “FA Cup 2003” like fans can in other sports games), Table Tennis has to rely on it's gameplay to justify it's existence, Look out for our full review in May.
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