Genre: Sports
Publisher: 2K Sports
Developer: 2K Sports
Release Date: June 23, 2008

As the DS' popularity shows no sign of abating (despite the best efforts of shovelware peddlers), more and more companies are looking for ways of cramming their console stars' complexity into a tiny cartridge. You can't blame them, with a market just waiting to be exploited, but past experience tells us quite clearly that a brilliant game on a 42-inch plasma often proves to be an unmitigated disaster when given the innovation of touch-screen controls. With this worrying trend, enter Top Spin 3. It's with some pleasure that I can announce that what we have here is a solid port of the console version, which loses a little sparkle through no fault of its own. It's virtually a victory on a playing field tarnished by sloppy porting.

As a tennis game, it doesn't do anything dramatically different with the core gameplay. The rules are the same as ever, though you have the option to play three sets, rather than a much longer game. While nothing new, this is particularly important for a handheld, when quick games here and there are very much the order of the day. The gameplay it provides is good enough; you can make a variety of different shots from anywhere on the court, with the opponents offering different tactics, depending on their skills and attributes. You also have the option of unleashing a special shot, which promises to break a rally in style by careful timing on the shoulder buttons.

It's a perfectly serviceable tennis simulation, which is let down a little by the controls, but unlike so many developers trying to shoehorn a game onto the DS, this is through no fault of the designers. There are no wacky touch-screen controls requiring you to slide the stylus around like a mad spirograph enthusiast, and no blowing on the microphone to make you run or anything ghastly like that. All of the essentials are mapped to the buttons, which would be a sensible decision if it weren't for the DS' digital d-pad.

Simply put, tennis games really need an analog stick to give you some kind of accuracy with your shots. The pad isn't tactile enough to differentiate between a light tap out the center of the court and a smash toward the far end, which means the gameplay itself hits a very real glass ceiling from which no other version of the game suffers. This may not sound like a massive deal, but as tennis games aren't renowned for their variety at the best of times, the limits on where you can place your shots makes a lot of the matches blend into one, despite the impressive number of players digitally recreated.

This is a shame because the rest of the package is largely as good as its console brethren. There are options for basic exhibition games, tournaments and a selection of mini-game challenges — it wouldn't be on a Nintendo console if there weren't party games, would it? These involve strange, but curiously addictive challenges, like knocking over barrels with your returns (which is made frustrating by the aforementioned control issues) and making the correct ball fall through the floor with your aim.

Most intriguingly, there's also a career mode, where you build a player from scratch, pick which tournaments to enter, and build up your stats using the minigames. Through this progression, your athlete-from-kit-form will eventually climb the world rankings. It's entertaining, though about as shallow as it's possible to be; it's really just a way of combining all the other gameplay modes into one unified area, while allowing you a customized avatar. The player's construction is a curiously limited process in some areas (there aren't that many heads to choose from), but puzzlingly fine-tuned in others (you need to decide whether you want your creation to grunt when they serve — take your time, this could be vital!)

If there's one area of Top Spin 3's transition to the DS that has unreservedly impressed me, it's the graphics. While the previous versions suffered from slowdown, this one managed to give a silky smooth play experience without reducing the graphic quality. The avatars move realistically, and all look the bit without resorting to the blockiness of other sports games on the DS (Hello, Winning Eleven!). I would go as far as to say this is one of the best-looking "realistic" games the console has to offer. True, it needs to animate fewer people at a time than a football sim would, but let nothing be taken away from this version of Top Spin: It looks very much the part, and the developers deserve praise for keeping the frame rate at a good level.

The sound slips slightly from this standard, but not to a fault. The noises from the athletes, the ball's bounce and the crowd reactions are all nicely implemented, though it's fair to say the music could be better. All in all, the presentation for the game is definitely one of its selling points, and having the same cover art as the bigger console versions doesn't feel misleading – you won't find Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal replaced with squeaking stickmen!

Unfortunately, the multiplayer makes the same mistake developers have been committing since the console first debuted in 2004. Making the multiplayer require that every player own the game will not equal more sales, developers! It just means that fewer people will experience your game and have no reason to buy it! The multi-cartridge play, combined with the lack of online multiplayer, means the majority of buyers will never get to experience the multiplayer portion, which is a shame, as tennis is one of those sports that plays well in multiplayer. What you get is a similar version of the single-player action, but with better AI. This lack of single-cartridge foresight is another reason that you're better off with the "big screen" versions, which don't require several copies for multiplayer fun. Just get a second game controller, and you're good to go.

If you absolutely must have tennis on the move and don't have a PSP, then the DS version of Top Spin 3 isn't a bad bet. With the frame rate issues of previous versions truly fixed, this is about a good a tennis sim as the system is capable of providing. Given the limitations of the controls, though, I would suggest you leave the racket sport to the living room. Or Wimbledon.

Score: 6.9/10