After hearing some good things about Top Spin 2, I went out and bought myself a used copy to see for myself. I have to say, the game is great! Much better than Virtua Tennis 3 Demo version in my opinion. I am having a blast playing it. It's very addictive and lots of fun against another human. Especially the career mode. I can't beleive I overlooked this game in the past. Good deal for a 20$ used copy. ;-)
Virtua Tennis has always been my preferred choice of tennis games. However, the demo has too many issues that hamper my satisfaction and fun factor at the moment. For example, rediculous excessive diving of players at the simple tap of the analog stick. Which by the way, only happens with Male characters. Female vs Females gameplay is better because the diving is hardly there. Another issue is the unrealistic long ball trail that someone else already mentioned before. It's very annoying and unrealistic. Sad really :-( ...I hope all this improves in the final version.
The graphics however, look fantastic!
Top Spin on the other hand has a very solid and more realistic gameplay mechanics. Very smooth gameplay with some really neat animations of the players. Sometimes you will be suprised to see other cool animations from your player that you hadn't seen before. It's like the NFL 2K version of Tennis..sooo many hidden animations that appear at the right time. Today for example, my player ran to hit the ball and as he was getting there, he begins to stumble but not quite fall, and barely hit the ball succesfully accross the net. It looked and felt fantastic! Great ball and player physics. The game is Top Notch in my opinion. Much better than the current Virtua Tennis(Demo)version. I have yet to experience any diving though, however after seeing how the Virtua Tennis Demo abused the diving feature, I could care less if it never appears in Top Spin 2.
Anyway, if anyone out there has not tried this game yet, Go get yourself a copy! I highly recommend it.
Sorry for the long review, just wanted to share this with you all.
;-)