All the things i hate: Ping PongOr as the Chinese call it..PING PONG

How do you start a review about a Table Tennis game, when there is really.. nothing.. funny or amazingly interesting about Table Tennis?

When i heard Rockstar was making a Table Tennis game i got really excited.. Why? Because when you throw the [developer] name "Rockstar" into the same sentence as ANY game, you get excited, and thats because whatever kind of game it is, you're pretty much gauranteed that nudity, harsh language, and violence in excess, is going to be included. I couldn't think of anything better than being able to taught or generally annoy your opponent between shots, before serves, or even just to yell insults as you slap the ball back and forth. EVEN something so simple like being able to gesture rudely at your opponent. All that sounds awesome to me. Like that XXX Golf game for PSOne, only, not completely shit in every aspect. Or was it a BMX game?

Table Tennis Review by Kenji Urban. (spoiler free)
Sound 10/10 • Gameplay 10/10
• Graphics 10/10 • Story 0/10
• Character Customization 0/10

Table Tennis, by Rockstar, can be described very simply; an extremely fluid, graphically pleasing game, with almost ZERO customization. Pick a character and play. Its that simple. You can change the color of his/her outfit, but its from a set selection of three to begin with. You can't even choose male or female and BUILD your own character up as you would [level up] in other sports games (like FNR3). By the way, this game has all the same online multi player as every other sports game.. I don't play this one online so there will be no online multi player review.

I know your listening, but did you hear me?
I play all my offline games with stereo headphones, so i get to enjoy a lot of the ambient sound effects that a lot of people often miss because the volume isn't loud enough.. and the sound is one of the really great things about this game, really REALLY great sound effects. Some players might say its nothing new, or nothing special, but i disagree, it makes a huge difference in this game. Every bounce. Every paddle slap. Evey grunt, groan and crowd chant and cheer, captured perfectly. Something that really gave me that 'goose-bumb' feeling was a crowd 'call-out' half way through my first 'real' match, where i had learned to play and was actually competing. I was about half way through, i was serving.. as i was aiming, a voice rang out from the crowd "Come On Luc!!" It wasn't loud, and sounded like it came right from the back of the crowd stand - it could not have been more perfect, and the realism of that moment gave me goose bumps :) Theres also the supportive crowd chanting when you're winning a lot, or losing badly.. SWEEDEN! SWEEDEN! SWEEDEN! etc etc (for the sweedish character).

Paddle Pop
The game play, is very simple. I always expected Tennis and ping pong games to be overly complicated, but its actually the opposite, with a very enjoyable control scheme.. Simply hit the button on the pad for the spin type you want the ball to have. Left spin? X Button. Right spin? B button. forward spin? Y button, and yes, A button for back spin. So looking at the control pad "X/A/B/Y" layout, left button spin left, right button spin right, etc etc.. with me? Something GREAT Rockstar did, was to mimic those controls on the right stick, push left for left spin etc etc.. Then you've got your aiming, via the left stick, no need to go into detail about that one.. aim it where you want it.. A cool aspect of aiming with the right stick is if you've aimed off the table by holding in a certain direction too long, the pad will vibrate until you've "pulled back" or re-aimed onto the table. There is no aiming cross hair, so you need to get into a mind-set in regards to the table boundaries and how hard/soft to hold or push the stick when aiming.

Every time you get ready to return a ball, you can 'hold' your arm back and charge your shot, building up your spin/power/speed gauge.. The CPUs gauge builds very slowly/not at all in the earlier tournament matches, and entirely too rapidly in he finals.. I found myself being 'out-served' on multiple occasions (where the ball is too fast to hit back/whatever thats called) even though the player i was using, literally, had double the stats of my opponent. its easy, then it gets hard, then you find yourself getting smacked down, almost without scoring.. the difficulty jump between easy and medium was astronomical, and being asked to finish a tourny on medium with the characters given to you at the start of the game, was silly to say the least.

After saying that, its highly addictive, and believe it or not, amazingly enjoyable to play. When i started playing, my highest 'rally' was 4, and last night it was 109 :) Its a huge amount of fun!