Ping Pong? From Rockstar? GTA this is not!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent game play coupled with nice graphics make it good

Cons: Not much in the game to do, but hit the ball....alot

The Bottom Line: 
Give it a shot ping pong fans, others may like it too, at it's heart it's fun. But for so little depth it is passable.

Author's Review
Ping Pong, or table tennis is a very interesting game. Much like it's brother tennis it involves hitting a ball back and forth over a net. In real life this game can be very fun for those who are looking for leisure or for those that are very serious. For a video game this area doesn't seem like a likely medium to use for big money. Rockstar has created the first major table tennis video game for the Xbox 360. Surprisingly enough this simple game concept has been so well fleshed out it is worth it's bargain price. We are all used to Rockstar for something other than leisure sport titles, mainly a little franchise named Grand Theft Auto. Why you say go from making mobster free roam games to table tennis of all things, I really don't know. It's a change of scenery that's for sure. But by coming out with this game Rockstar has proven they can be good for more than just M rated gaming goodness.

Table tennis has only a few games modes, tournament, exhibition, xbox live, and training. This here is the game's only real weakness. Tournament takes the longest while exhibition or xbox live are for quicker sessions. The training is there to get players used to the controls and tightening their skills. I give the okay to table tennis' game modes but they could have added a create a player and go on career which would have been very sweet. Xbox Live is good because you can play the real thing instead of computer AI that is either too good or plain stupid. It's fast and easy to get into so you won't feel frustrated waiting around for long loads or crap. Although one funny thought that comes to mind is having trash talk during the game. Like, "Take that Mutha F*****!" Or better yet, "Eat Ball A*****!" (I should really start using my headset more often.) Anyways that's the break down of game modes but how does the game play turn out?

The best thing about this entire game is the game play. It's fast, exciting, entertaining, and yet, slightly boring. It hurts to say this but it's hard to swallow any more than an hour of this game at one time. The controls are brilliant, the graphics excellent, and the animations spot on, but it's still ping pong. Just ping pong. Whack, whack, whack, Crack! You can only take so much of this before your head starts to hurt. For the record I love the controls. It's like any other tennis game where you aim your shot with the analog stick and use the buttons for different shots. Pushing to hard in one direction will rumble the controller warning you to not hit it off the table. The shots you have are top spin, back spin, left and right spin. All mapped to the face buttons for easy access. A good player will use them in tandem to set up winning shots and so forth. Although going for the 50 hit rally is always cool too. The response of your onscreen avatar is most important though. The character is right with you the whole time but I still don't like the way they move from left to right. They can get a little stuck but besides that they listen to the controller pretty well. You can also play using the right analog stick alone but I didn't experiment with this too much because the other way seemed more natural. All in all I give a big thumbs up to the game play. It's the best table tennis game we'll see in a while.

Graphics. How good of graphics could a game like table tennis possibly have. Well Rockstar game this game the next generation treatment big time. The characters of whom come from a variety of different countries, all fictional of course (not the countries). They are very life like and given a lot of polys. They have good cloth movement, facial expressions, and they move like real people. Plus they swing that racket like they should. The characters have a wide array of strengths and weaknesses like having good spin or weak power. It's up to what you want in a player. The next thing is the table and the ball, they both look good. The arenas you play in also have a good amount of realism. The crowd that is shrowded in the background also looked good from what I could tell. The sound is a small portion, but I'll tell you anyway. The music is fairly techno and it matches the mood pretty well. The characters mostly do that chinese sounding "what you looking at" thing but they also cheer and look mad sometimes too. The crowd will react to good hits and they understand what's going on. So that about does it for sound.

The final word for table tennis is that it's a solid game with little depth. The game plays great but lacks that lasting appeal a video game should have. The Xbox Live component is worthwhile but as I said, it's just ping pong all day long. Can you handle that? Rent it first, lend it from a friend, or force it from them like me, but if you can do that then rent it. It's got good graphics and a nice presentation but can it hold up against time? I enjoy it in small bursts and that's it. Right now it's forty bucks so give it some thought. Rockstar has crafted a fine game from a small niche in sports and I give it my recommendation.