Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis - Review
Added June 14th, 2006 by Sallizar
Introduction:
Who would’ve imagined the Xbox 360’s first budget game would be from Rockstar? More importantly though, who would’ve thought they would make a Table Tennis game? Well, between my shock at the big “E” on a game from the GTA folks and the forty dollar “budget” price tag, I just couldn’t resist. Along with the game I tossed a 360 Premium box, an extra wireless controller and a two year warranty card into my Best Buy cart and headed for the cash registers. Now the question becomes, is a very pretty game of Pong worth six-hundred dollars?
Gameplay:
The offline portion of Table Tennis is straightforward. A single player can play various levels of tournaments in an attempt to unlock various things or multiple players can go head to head. Either way you choose, a standard match is a best two out of three games affair with the first one to eleven being the winner of the game. Any time you miss a ball or knock one out, the other player scores and vice versa. I was disappointed that an option for our house rule of winning a game by seven unanswered points was not included, but the number of matches and points to win can all be modified if the players wish.
Playing the game itself requires a teeny bit of skill and a ton of strategy. Players have a fairly large arsenal of tricks they can pull out to score points. The biggest advantage a player can have is a loaded focus bar. Anytime you charge a shot (hitting the ball hard by holding down the spin button) you build up focus. You can use the focus to hit a single shot a little bit better than normal or you can save it up. Once the bar fills, you can activate focus mode which makes every shot you hit better than average until the bar drains. This can only be done three times in one game, so it becomes a critical part of the player’s strategy. Do you burn focus early to get a quick lead or do you save it for the waning moments of the game to mount a come back or seal a victory? The game is set by default to auto activate the focus mode as soon as the bar fills, but I highly recommend changing that so you can really experience the way it can be used to better your game.
Who would’ve imagined the Xbox 360’s first budget game would be from Rockstar? More importantly though, who would’ve thought they would make a Table Tennis game? Well, between my shock at the big “E” on a game from the GTA folks and the forty dollar “budget” price tag, I just couldn’t resist. Along with the game I tossed a 360 Premium box, an extra wireless controller and a two year warranty card into my Best Buy cart and headed for the cash registers. Now the question becomes, is a very pretty game of Pong worth six-hundred dollars?
Gameplay:
The offline portion of Table Tennis is straightforward. A single player can play various levels of tournaments in an attempt to unlock various things or multiple players can go head to head. Either way you choose, a standard match is a best two out of three games affair with the first one to eleven being the winner of the game. Any time you miss a ball or knock one out, the other player scores and vice versa. I was disappointed that an option for our house rule of winning a game by seven unanswered points was not included, but the number of matches and points to win can all be modified if the players wish.
Playing the game itself requires a teeny bit of skill and a ton of strategy. Players have a fairly large arsenal of tricks they can pull out to score points. The biggest advantage a player can have is a loaded focus bar. Anytime you charge a shot (hitting the ball hard by holding down the spin button) you build up focus. You can use the focus to hit a single shot a little bit better than normal or you can save it up. Once the bar fills, you can activate focus mode which makes every shot you hit better than average until the bar drains. This can only be done three times in one game, so it becomes a critical part of the player’s strategy. Do you burn focus early to get a quick lead or do you save it for the waning moments of the game to mount a come back or seal a victory? The game is set by default to auto activate the focus mode as soon as the bar fills, but I highly recommend changing that so you can really experience the way it can be used to better your game.
Another important part of playing the game is using spin on the ball to psyche out your opponent. You could add right spin to a shot to the right corner to make sure that the ball ends up just out of reach of your opponent. You can also put back, left and top spin on the ball. In game this is represented by the colored stripes floating just above the ball. These colors match the appropriate buttons pressed to create the spin on the ball. For example, the A button is used for top spin so a ball hit with that spin will have green stripes around it. This is important because hitting the ball back with the same spin puts counter spin on it which can cause your opponent to make a lousy return or miss all together.
Online multiplayer is about the same as offline except for the addition of ranked games. You can take place in matches or tournaments to achieve bragging rights on XBL and to unlock even more achievements. The various elements of the game, focus mode, spin, etc. all become even more strategically important when facing off against a real person, so make sure to test out strategies in the single player tournaments before heading online and getting stomped.
Graphics:
Holy cow look at those folks sweat! Well, the girls don’t sweat of course, they glisten. Why is that next-gen sports games go out of the way to make everyone look soaking wet? Table Tennis does it well though with players getting progressively sweatier as the game heats up. Along with this wonderful effect, everything looks great. The player’s clothes move realistically and the players themselves are superbly textured and animated. Hair physics seem to have befuddled the Rockstar team though. All the women characters either have short hair, or hair pulled back in a tight ponytail or bun and the men are all clean cut or bald. I guess that makes sense for a sport such as Table Tennis, but I had to explain to a friend that Cassidy was in fact supposed to be a girl. There are some minor collision detection issues (“Wow that ball went right through his shirt!”) and I noticed minor tearing during replays when the camera was super zoomed in on the action. Those minor quibbles aside, there’s a ton of graphical magic going on in the game and it still maintains a silky smooth frame rate during gameplay.
Audio:
I don’t really know how to explain it, but Table Tennis has the best crowd sound effects I’ve heard in a sports game. As the game progresses the crowd ranges from a dull murmur to a roar of support for the winning character. Occasionally a single voice will call out something or the audience will gasp in disbelief at the stunning smash that caught your opponent off guard. The playable character voices, mostly in game taunts, are also well done and help to add a little flavor to each of the players. The soundtrack is assorted instrumental music, mostly upbeat techno flavored, that dynamically adjusts to the gameplay. As the rally count goes up the music builds up louder and louder adding to the tension.
Controls:
Table Tennis handles with unbelievable ease. The left thumbstick moves your character and is also used to aim shots when you begin to swing. The face buttons or the right thumbstick can be used to put top, back, left, and right spin on the ball. Holding the left bumper results in a soft shot, while the right bumper lets the player do a focus shot. Either trigger can be pulled when the focus meter is full to activate focus mode on ever hit for a few seconds. If you’re aiming too far off the table, the controller will vibrate to warn you that you’re about to give your opponent a free point. It’s an intuitive control scheme that anybody can pick up in moments, yet it provides for multiple levels of mastery.
Replay:
You’re going to be playing this for quite a while I think. It’s not a game like Oblivion that sucks hours out of your personal time for weeks, it’s one of those games you’ll drop in when you have friends over or you just want to play something different. Xbox Live support seemed to be fairly solid and mostly lag free. I did have a few problems connecting to another Talk Xbox staffer during testing, but I didn’t have any issues other than that so I’ll blame it on his Internet connection. There are plenty of options on XBL that range from Exhibition matches to Ranked Tournaments. You’ll also be playing the single player tournaments a good bit to unlock the wide variety of players, outfits, and venues.
Summary:
Table Tennis is an excellent addition to the slowly growing collection of 360 titles. It’s great to see a developer try something completely out of the ordinary for them and succeed. If you enjoyed those fierce ping pong competitions at summer camp then you owe it to yourself to give Table Tennis a try. Single player is quite challenging and multiplayer matches ought to be considered a spectator sport in itself. On top of all that you’ll still have enough money left over to
grab a burger on the way home.
