Top Spin 3

On the Xbox 360 and PS3, Top Spin 3 is as realistic as tennis gets. And Wii Sports lovers get a more advanced tennis game.

Gaming tennis has always had two distinct flavors. For fun, cartoon-y games there's Mario Tennis and Wii Sports tennis. For more realistic tennis, the go-to games are Virtua Tennis and Top Spin. 2K Sports unveiled the newest installment in the realistic Top Spin series, Top Spin3, in Miami this week, and Maria Sharapova was on hand to introduce the new game.

Like the two Top Spin games prior, Top Spin 3 provides the most realistic tennis game experience out there. Top Spin 3 has been recreated from scratch, and the graphics sure do show. Wonderfully smooth character animations impress, and you don't have that creepy pseudo-realistic thing going on with players' faces. Even the gameplay has received a big revamp, giving it a little bit of a learning curve even for seasoned tennis gamers.

Aside from Sharapova, other tennis players, including James Blake, were on hand to take a swing at the Wii version of the game, which is by far the most casual entry point to the series--think Wii Sports tennis, but with much more player control and detailed features.

New controls are intimidating at first, but offer a more realistic tennis experience.

New controls are intimidating at first, but offer a more realistic tennis experience.

Top-notch Tennis

On the Xbox 360 and PS3, graphics are top-notch, and it's obvious that a heap of effort was put into making the characters, courts and animations really shine this time around. There's an in-depth player creator a la Tiger Woods PGA Tour that goes deeper in detail than you'll probably ever need. If you played last year's Virtua Tennis 3, you're looking at that level of graphical detail, but Top Spin 3 has done an even better job with fine character details and has better animations from shot to shot.

The final game will bring more than 20 pro tennis players to 40 real courts, some big-name locales and others being smaller, practice-style locations like in Top Spin 2. Each court looks strikingly real, using mapping and high-resolution textures to produce awesome-looking grass, clay and other surfaces. I played a handful of matches on a variety of different courts, and the overall experience was a good one.

Where you position yourself for each shot is just as important as timing and power.

Where you position yourself for each shot is just as important as timing and power.

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