Bringing Individuality to the Game

By Alex McLain

Tennis games bring something unique to the traditional world of sports games. Generally, sports videogames are team affairs wherein you control entire squads of athletes. Tennis, however, is a one-on-one match of wits, talent, and pure athletic ability (even in doubles it’s much more personal). Matches are filled with grunts of despair, tossed and shattered racquets, cries of glee, and the occasional hat tipped to your opponent. You’ve got only yourself to blame in defeat, and victory is oh so much more juicy sweet when it’s all your doing.

It’s this sense of individual intensity, frustration, and blissful reverie that can make or break a tennis game, and it’s precisely this “feel” that Top Spin™ manages to capture so well. The folks at Power and Magic Development (Top Spin developer) should be showered with many gifts for paying such close attention to the less tangible aspects of this Xbox exclusive game. While I’m sure you’d take my word for it, I’d like to back up this statement with a few examples of how they pulled off this feat.

It’s all about the details.

I Can Do What to His Face?
The “Create a Character” option has become standard for sports games over the years, but the customizing options in Top Spin are so in-depth, it’s almost ridiculous. I was able to literally look across the hall and create a facsimile of one of my colleagues that was so accurate, it was almost scary. Check this out: After choosing my character’s sex (male) and DNA color code (yeah, it’s that specific), I was given the option to “sculpt” the head of my character. Within that option I had the following areas to choose from:

Face Global
Face Top
Face Middle
Face Bottom

I chose Face Middle to start with, and I was offered the following options just to change my guy’s nose:

Nose Shape
Nose Hook
Nose Break
Nose Tip
Nostrils

Create your own unique tennis star.

Within each of those settings was a square with a reticule inside it. Depending on where I “slid” the reticule, the nose changed appropriately to the option I selected. For example, under Nose Shape, if I pushed the reticule to the upper-leftmost corner of the square the nose became very thin and pushed up just beneath the eyes (very Grinch-like). If I slid the reticule to the bottom right corner, his nose became very wide and long. All that just for one subsection of one facial feature! The options are nearly limitless. You can also adjust the brow ridge, eyebrows, chin, and cheeks, just to name a very few. The sheer scope of what’s available is staggering, and the fact that nearly every area is changeable via a “slider” instead of static preset options just makes things that much more interesting.

As if this extravaganza of customization wasn’t enough, you’ll also unlock various items as you play to further augment your character’s style. These include things like hairstyles, earrings, clothes, hats, facial hair, racquets, and more. And, you can assign your player a specific natural talent (powerful, technician, defensive) to fit your own playing style. I could go on about how your character will evolve during the course of his or her career, but that’s a whole other topic.

Show off your skills online.

Bringing Your Game Live
Playing your own style against the CPU is all well and good, but individuality is so much more suited to real human competition. That’s where Xbox Live comes in, and that’s where Top Spin reaches feverish intensity. That’s where real grunts of frustration (via the Xbox Live Communicator) and cries of glee take place. You can even toss your racquet in frustration or compliment an opponent in the game. You can, after any point, give “attitude” by pressing the White or Black buttons. Pressing the White button shows your character celebrating after you win a point, or congratulating your opponent on a point well done. The Black button, on the other hand, lets you display anger and frustration at a lost point, or “celebrate” by talking a little smack to your opponent with some mocking body language. Oh, did I mention that you can bring your freakishly customizable character onto Xbox Live? It’s just that much more satisfying when you beat your opponent with a virtual you.

There’s also the small matter of XSN Sports, which will allow you to create your own leagues and tournaments, but again, that’s a whole other article. We’ll get to it soon enough—don’t worry.