Top Spin Tennis (Xbox)

I finally busted my Xbox cherry this weekend, as a friend of mine insisted he doesn't play it often enough to warrant keeping it hooked up at his house (it was actually still in a backpack). We hooked it up in my living room because my wife is in Seattle until Wednesday, and inevitably Saturday night I ended up playing NBA Street V3, Top Spin & Halo 2 until 5am Sunday morning along with him and my younger brother.

If anything else be sure to click the pic to your left and get a good look, that way the next time you play against a female voice on Xbox Live, you have a nice visual to accompany it.

If only I had an audio link of what was going on that night - I'm sure everyone and their brother would've been offended in some form or fashion (mostly because of our language and shit-talk, but other than that my buddy had on a pink polo shirt that didn't sit well with our Midwestern asses).

Anyway, quick review - Top Spin. This game is the best tennis game I've played since Tennis for Nintendo (albeit it's coincidentally the ONLY tennis game I've played since the aforementioned). Great graphics, every imaginable feature, and great gameplay makes this game a great time despite being a fan of the sport or not.

You can play men's or women's, singles or doubles (no mixed), you can create a custom tournament, play an exhibition or begin your own career that you can use in versus mode. Finally, you can take it online, and as soon as someone sends me a 2-month free Live subscription I'm getting online to see if anyone is still around to play against me (think I have one in my email now as we spea - type).

I created my tennis player which I might add looks nothing like me (looks nothing like Anna either, just a gratuitous game shot to the right) - so if there's a knock on the game it's that I painstakingly created myself on Tiger Woods 2 years in a row, but can't even scratch a lardass on matching it in TS. Off the bat you have a choice of sponsors from Prince, Adidas, Wilson, something else and Oakley - I went Oakley - and each sponsor has a set of challenges for you to complete for money and more items for your sports bag. As you progress from rookie to young gun to pro to legend, different challenges open up for you to earn money in. In each nation there's a coach that advances your skills in certain areas of your game from serve, forehand, backhand and volley, and each have a minor tournament for you to enter. I've won both of my entry tournaments so far, and as a result I've had enough to build my avatar up more so then the competition I'm facing currently. That's as far as I've went, so I'm sure I'll mention that again at some point.

You'd think I'd get on here and review NBA Street V3 being as it's a new game (not 2 years old), but nope, I've had that pic of Anna Kournikova in my folder since that game was introduced and I was just dieing to share it. I'll get on the Street game later in the week, but for now I gotta get home and get shot up in Halo 2 ~