Top Spin 3, 2K Sports’ latest tennis game, is out on the PS3. Three Speech was in Miami recently to get some quality hands-on time with the game, and chat with some of the talent behind it.

It doesn’t get much better than sitting in the Miami sunshine watching lovely tennis star Maria Sharapova excitedly playing a videogame on an exclusive rooftop tennis court. She’s part of an impressive roster of playable stars gracing 2K’s Top Spin 3, one that also includes James Blake, Gael Monfils, Justine Henin, Andy Murray, Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, and, as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, Rafa Nadal. You can also play as tennis legends such as Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg.

As Three Speech dons its tennis whites for some hands-on time on the PS3 version, though, there are no legends in sight - we’re starting out from scratch in the single player career mode, which looks to be the best yet in any tennis game. Here you can customise your male or female player to the Nth degree, including body types, facial features and gear. It’s good enough that you can create decent facsmilies of any real player or person, or just create funny tennis-playing freaks.

Working your way up from the Amateurs, playing against local rivals on smaller courts, via Challenger level, to the proper tournament circuit, you earn experience points which you can assign to eight attributes - forehand, backhand, service, return, volley, power, speed, and stamina. You also unlock points that you can spend on better gear.

Online play promises to be pretty impressive too, with four game modes including singles, doubles, quick-match and a full world tour with live stat-tracking. But it’s the high levels of realism in the game that developers PAM, 2K’s Paris studio, are particularly proud of.

“We are huge tennis fans,” PAM’s Managing Director Stephane Dupas told Three Speech, “so we tried very hard to make Top Spin 3 as lifelike as possible. We feel that we have created something that reproduces the adrenaline, tactics and tension of the sport like no other videogame.”

The gameplay itself is considerably more realistic than previous tennis games such as Virtua or Smash Court, although it retains a hugely playable arcade feel. As with previous Top Spin games you have four types of shot assigned to the controller’s main buttons – standard, slice, lob and top spin, but this time your footwork plays a big part.

Starting out as a rookie, Three Speech are frankly worse than ‘Tiger’ Tim Henman on a rainy day at Wimbledon. We’re outpaced and fluffing our shots, much of this because it takes longer to change direction (realistically) and get across the court than in say, Virtua Tennis, especially as our speed attribute at this point is pretty low. The direction of your shot is be dictated by your positioning, stance and direction of player, plus the distance from the ball and how early you start your swing.
As Stephane explains, “Success in Top Spin 3 requires more than just frantic button-mashing. Just like the real sport, pulling off a good shot is about perfect timing, good positioning, and playing the right shot. For example, if you swing too early, and you have to stretch to reach the ball, it’ll result in a bad shot, which lacks power and precision. Plus, you’ll overstretch yourself and stagger or lurch, making it hard to reach the ball in time on the next return. You’re always looking to put your opponent into that position with your shots.”

The added realism means that ultimately you have much more control over your shots, particularly in the serve. You pull back on the right stick to toss the ball up then move the stick forward for a straight serve, clockwise for a slice, or counterclockwise for a lift serve.

There are plenty of other subtle moves to get your thumbs around too. For example, by holding down the R1 button, your player will hit the ball then immediately follow through to the net for a net shot, and you can, with a fair bit of practice, master drop shots by flicking the right stick.

Players also tire visibly the longer matches go on, and the players can be seen to pick up grass or clay stains on their clothes from sliding across courts.

The graphics look super-sharp on the PS3, with excellent player likenesses and good lighting effects on the many realistically-captured world locations (Roland Garros, Wimbledon etc).

“Developing the game has been a long and incredibly complex process,” PAM’s Creative Director Francois Giuntini told us in Miami. “We worked very closely with real-world players such as Sharapova, Federer and Murray to ensure we captured their likenesses perfectly. The similarity is more than just skin-deep. Their skills and strengths reflect those of ther real-world counterparts, as you’ll discover when you face the raw baseline power of Federer, or the terrifying 155MPH serves of Andy Roddick.”

Chris Burke