The original Top Spin game had a simple but addictive quality to it, while maintaining just enough realism to make the game interesting. TS 2 has managed to regress in both aspects.

In order to counter the usual “Ping pong” problem inherent in many tennis games, whereby balls hit never ever go out, the developers have tweaked TS 2 so that top spin and sliced shots easily go out. Sounds good? Not really – the problem is that whether your shots will go out or not have no rhyme or reason to them at all. You could be perfectly positioned and time the ball perfectly and yet find your shots consistently going out. Other times, you may be on the run and yet you are able to pull off stunning “no way in real life” shots.

It is now almost impossible to serve aces and unlike the excellent Table Tennis from Rockstar, it almost does not matter in TS 2 whether the shot you have received was hard hit or not – it is as easy to return a full powered serve as it'd be to return a poor 2nd serve.

All in all, this game is neither realistic enough to be even a “half sim”, nor is it great arcade fun. Only get this if you are desperate to play a tennis game on your shiny new console.