Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis (Xbox 360) > Reviews > Twenty First Century Pong

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment	Excellent - very playable game
Addictiveness	Very hard to stop playing
Graphics	Excellent
Difficulty & Complexity	Very simple
Value for money	Excellent value

Advantages:	Fast addictive gameplay, great online multiplayer, photorealistic graphics
Disadvantages:	Short single player game

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

When Rockstar games announced they were developing for the Xbox 360 everyone expected their usual fare, a new Grand Theft Auto or Midnight Club, maybe a sequel to Manhunt, but definitely something urban and gritty. But what did we get, a game of ping pong. Everybody laughed at first, they thought it had to be some sort of joke, but now the games here, and believe me, it's no joke.
Rockstar may be new in the field of sports games, but they have really excelled with their first offering in the genre. Everything about the game is extremely polished, from the photo realistic graphics, perfect gameplay physics, and suitable sound effects to the simple uncluttered menus. This really is the perfect simulation of the sport.
Gameplay is easy to pick up with your analogue stick controlling your player and direction of shot and your controllers face buttons determining what type of spin you put on the ball, and the shoulder buttons either adding speed to your shots or slowing them down. But whilst the gameplay is easy to pick up it is hard to master and it's so much fun to play you won't even notice all the hours you put in to perfect your technique.
The games single player mode though is a little lacking though, with only four tournaments to play through and no career mode, but the learning curve on the games 4 difficulty levels is pretty steep means you'll have to put in a fair few hours to get through them. But the real meat of the game is the excellent multiplayer, both on and offline. The offline is fun, playing one on one with a friend, but online gives you extra options. Aswell as playing one on one you can set up tournaments for up to 8 players. This can be great fun, battling it out with either friends or strangers for the number one spot. Another additional mode you get online is spectator mode, where you can just pick any game online and find yourself a spot in the audience, it's not a big feature, but it's something different and it can be quite entertaining checking out the competition.
Although it's quite a simple sport, no expense has been spared in it's depiction. You may not have real world players or any licences, but the games eleven fictional players are depicted in the greatest detail, with excellent motion capture work meaning they don't just look real, but they move realistically in every way, even their clothes. They even sweat, with sweat marks appearing on their shirts as they play, and the longer you play the bigger they get. The same attention to detail has also been put in to the sound, with perfect sound effects from the noise of the ball, the varied range of the announcer to the equally varied exclamations from the players when they either win or lose a point.
Overall you get one of the best, if not the best, sports game currently on the planet.. It's a real surprise coming from a developer so heavily established with other genres, but hats off to Rockstar, they really have delivered the goods here.