Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 36
 Marginal Game - Very Limited Scope May 28, 2006
Thuong H. Phung (Newington, Connecticut United States)
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
Tennis game has been made available on console systems as early as for the 8-bit Nintendo (as far as I remember). So why not table tennis? The only good reason I have come up so far is that table tennis is not a very well known and loved in this country (US) as comparing to tennis.
I love playing table tennis and with the above reason, I definitely give Rockstar credits for making this game available for the Xbox 360.
These are the Pro's and Con's of the game:
Pro's:
1) Fun sport. It's table tennis! It's different.
2) Graphic is good.
3) There is no learning curve. It's very simple to play.
Con's:
1) There is no career mode.
2) The game mode is too simple. There is no "upgrade" in this game. Meaning the game wasn't designed to allow you to use either money or points (or your progress) to buy or invest in better equipment.
3) The tournament is very simple. The game just shows the tournament tree instead of making it look like you really enter one.
4) It is a little sluggish to move the player.
5) Only two view modes (near or far).
6) No tournament for double.
7) There is no choice for picking either shake-hand or pen-holder style (the way you hold the paddle). You just pick the pre-built player with his/her holding type.
I guess for its price $39.99, I can't expect much out of it. After all, it's still a fun game to play.
I hope you enjoy.
 Table Tennis? Why the heck? I'll tell you why! November 6, 2006
Gerald Keil (California)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Ok I love table tennis in real life. I just have to try this game out and see for myself if it was real. At first you are fustrated at the controls and 10 minutes later. You're hooked like a little kid on candy. You don't wanna stop playing. It becomes addicting. Trust me if you pick this one up you'll make sure it doesn't hit the ground.
FUN FUN FUN~ January 31, 2007
Sofia Hernandez (Woodside, NY)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Ok so this game is fun! Hubby just bought this for our new 360 during a Best Buy black Friday sale. It ended up being great as other reviewers pointed out. Cool moves, nice motion, nice achievements to be unlocked. Totally recommend it when you want to play with your spouse, child or when company is over. It is great to see who can slap it back and forth the longest. RockStar games rocks!! No pun intended!
Ok check this out May 26, 2006
Rx (CA)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This games seems like it would suck. But really, it's pretty fun. The graphics on this game are amazing! It's really fun online. If you are thinking about getting the game rent it first and see how you like it. This game should be checked out by everyone atlest.
This game will change your view of PONG as a game forever !! August 18, 2006
Flogix (USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Graphics :
They get the job done, they aren't as impressive as I was expecting, everything seems to have a bit of a blur effect on it that makes the textures seem less sharp than they actually are. Everything is in fairly detailed 3D though, ranging from the players, the judge, the audience. all pretty solid, but nothing too impressive. The animations are extremely well done, nothing looks jerky, everything's pretty fluid, and the nice touches, like rippling clothes, are really well done.
Sound :
43 song soundtrack, mostly techno, mostly coming into play as the matches drag on. Once you hit about 15 hits in the rally a song starts playing in the background and gets louder as the match goes on(or the ambient sound goes down, either way, the music becomes more noticeable as the match wears on), helps make it seem more dramatic/intense. Otherwise, the sounds pretty standard, audience cheers, boos, pings, pongs, and the occasional taunt in your players native tongue.(although they will speak English sometimes too)
Gameplay :
While you may think it's just pong, it isn't, at all. There's four different shots, top spin, backspin, left spin, and right spin, all of which create a little glow around the ball, which you have about a third of a second to see and each shot has a counter shot(thus why you can see the color, to counter). You can pick your shot type with the right thumbstick, and try and aim your shot with the left(left also moves your character). Depending on how long you hold the shot type, the harder you'll hit the ball(hardest is not always best) When a particularly impressive shot or a focus shot is made(when you make a good shot you get focus, much like bullet time, allowing you to start hitting harder) the game will change the camera to show a close up of the shot in slow mo, really adding to a dramatic effect that works pretty well. Over time you'll accumulate or even lose "focus" which can be used in two ways. 1) Focus shots. By holding the right bumper when you hit a shot you hit the ball harder for that hit, you'll lose some focus, but it's a good quick way to put more power behind the shot. Way 2) Let the focus accumulate, once a certain meter fills, you enter focus mode. During this time the focus meter will be constantly depleting, but as long as there's some focus there, every single shot you hit during that time will have a LOT more power behind it. If both players enter the third tier of focus mode at the same time, everything fades out except for the table and the players, which become brightly lit. When that happens, that's definitely the most intense and if you ask me, fun parts of the game. It all works pretty well, and comes out pretty entertaining in the end.
Live : This is one of those titles where the main focus is on live, as the single player offering is a bit on the weak end. With single player, all you've got is Exhibition and four tournaments. Online, it's you vs. the world.(And vastly more challenging than the AI) You're going to get slaughtered for a while online, but once you start to figure out how it all works, there's a lot of fun to be had getting these true battles of 100+ rally hits for each point.(my record as of this writing sits at 152) The games themselves are actually pretty quick even if it goes for 150 pings(that takes about a minute) Oftentimes people will stay silent when you're playing and let out some sort of exclamation at the end of each rally, it's intense enough that talking COULD break the concentration. Lag can be an issue, but the game has a few ways of compensating that caught me off guard when they came into play and nearly cost me a point.(The game makes sure the ball never stops moving, so if you don't get any info from the other player, the ball just bounces off some invisible wall back at you) Online you can play Ranked on unranked games, the ranking system uses the same method of CoD2 with the "Trueskill" method. Within ranked and unranked, there is exhibition, where people just play 1v1 matches.. The other is a "timed tournament" where you get 2-8 people to play Round Robin, and whoever has the most wins at the end wins.(I think the time limit by default is 8 minute matches. Overall, the live is extremely entertaining, I just see two minor flaws. The skill gap. I can go into an 8 player tournament and find 3 of them can barely return a serve. The next 3 I can beat but it's a good game, then the last 2 make me look like an idiot out there. Other flaws fall into character use with some just seeming to be useless in multiplayer.
Unlockables : 11 characters, you start with 4, each character has five costumes, which are just different colored shirts essentially. Each character plays a little differently, catering to certain playstyles. Jesper plays well to power hitters, Jurgen plays well for a technical get the guy running around trying to catch trick shots. Every player plays a bit differently.
Value : Compared to the usual 360 game price, you can't complain, but it is disappointing to not see much of a career mode offering, almost solely focusing on the live component, but as a 40 dollar game, it's easily the best of the bunch. If you're on the edge, rent it first, see if you like it, I see many people going "Table Tennis? As a game? LAME". Just try it, you might enjoy it. Hell, you might even want to buy it.
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