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				Graphics: 9.0 Gameplay: 9.5 Sound: 9.0 Control: 9.0 Replay Value: 8.0 Live play: 9.0 Rating: 9.0 Publisher:  Rockstar Games Developer:  Rockstar San Diego Number Of Players:  1-2 (8-player tournaments) Screenshots
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  When Rockstar announced in early March that it would release a table tennis game, many, including me, thought it was an early April Fool’s joke. The table tennis part wasn’t so unbelievable; no one would have batted an eye if it had been EA’s announcement. But Rockstar, most infamous for its Grand Theft Auto series and most recently The Warriors?

  It was no joke, and there’s nary a gun or a hooker in sight in Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had. After all, it’s Pong for the next generation.

  Rockstar clearly designed TT with simplicity and a focus on table tennis mechanics in mind. It lacks some of the deeper features of other sports sims, such as a career mode. It’s easy to pick up and play, but you’ll struggle a bit without using the comprehensive tutorial, which includes drills to help you learn the basics of spin, placing your shots and other skills you’ll need once you face real and AI opponents. Players are encouraged and even rewarded with an achievement for completing the tutorial with a perfect score, and there are times when it’s worth it to revisit the drills after an especially humiliating defeat.

  You have four player characters available to you when the game begins. China’s Liu Ping is a fairly well-balanced character, while Swede Jesper (pronounced “Yesper”) has reach and power the other characters lack – his topspin smash is unreturnable. American Haley, the only female default character, and Frenchman Luc round out the crew.

  TT allows you to play offline against AI opponents or a friend or online over Xbox Live. Offline single-player modes include an exhibition mode and a tournament ladder mode that allows you to unlock costumes (what is it with game designers’ obsession with playing dress-up?) and seven characters in addition to the four default ones.

  Because there’s no career mode, characters’ skills and attributes don’t change as they get more experienced. Rather, the player can progress through the ranks only by getting more skilled and picking the right characters after unlocking them.

  Game play

  TT is a game of timing, and it takes a while to learn and internalize the necessary rhythm. As soon as your opponent sends the ball toward you, you can use one of the face buttons or the right-hand analog stick to start winding up to hit the ball. You can then use the left analog stick to control placement. But if your timing is off – if you use the left stick before your windup, for example, or after you’ve hit the ball – your character will move instead and may be out of position for the return.

  The assignment of face buttons and the right stick is intuitive. Using either the “A” (bottom) button or pulling the right stick back puts a straightforward topspin on the ball. The “Y” button or forward stick puts a backspin on it. The “X” button creates a left spin, and the “B” button spins the ball right. The amount of time the button is pressed will dictate the amount of spin, so there’s a lot of room for finesse if you’re quick enough to pull it off. My favorite shot, for example, is a left-spinning ball placed in the far left corner of the table. If it’s got enough speed on it, it shoots right off the edge of the table and is hard to return.

  The shoulder buttons come into play too. The left shoulder button cause the shot to be soft, allowing you to try to dink one just over the net if your opponent is too far from the table. The right shoulder button gives you a special “focus shot,” and holding down either trigger gives you a few second of boost from your “focus meter.” During that time, your returns are faster and more precise.

  The ball in flight is color-coded depending on the spin that’s on it. With a game this fast, it’s a lot to ask a player to hit the matching button for counter-spin (there’s an entire drill in the tutorial just for this), but the color-coding means the option is there for the especially skilled player.

  Character movement is limited but adequate. Your character will, up to a point, get himself into position to hit the ball without much intervention from you. Sometimes a shot to one extreme or the other requires you to use the left stick to move him, but he still won’t move very fast. There’s very little lunging or diving for the ball in this game; as one of my random online opponents observed, “He doesn’t move fast because he never gets out of his stance.”

  Pretty price, prettier graphics

  Though TT is a budget title, Rockstar didn’t skimp on the graphics. There’s not too much to the environments – just a table and some indistinct crowd scenery that comes up only between games. But what Rockstar didn’t put into the environments they saved for the characters.

  Characters are realistic from the get-go. As they approach the table, they stretch and strut before getting into their game stance. Your character will yell and cockily pump his fist in triumph after winning a point or grimace and pace petulantly after losing one. Characters start a match with dry uniforms and skin but get sweatier as the match wears on.

  Rockstar obviously did its homework when designing and animating the player models. Players even have distinct paddle grips. Liu Ping and Yung Soo, for example, use a “penholder grip,” which, according to USA Table Tennis, gives the best forehand but a not-so-great backhand, something the savvy opponent could exploit.

  Animations are fairly glitch-free, although there is a fair amount of what I call “sliding,” that all-too-common video game phenomenon wherein characters’ feet move over the surface as though it were ice. It’s especially evident if you’re observing an online match from overhead.

  Product placement abounds. Every player wears branded uniforms, and every arena features a different brand of equipment. (Perhaps the copious product placement allowed Rockstar to sell the game at such a bargain-basement price.)

  The camera is fairly fixed and seems to be pointing in the right direction at all times. In single-player and Xbox Live play, your view is from behind and above your character. Players can choose between two camera views, one almost over the shoulder and one further back for a wider view.

  In local two-player games, players change places depending upon who’s serving, and the game is intuitive enough so that it’s an easy adjustment from the rear view to the front view of your character at the other end of the table. Though the right and left spin buttons don’t reverse, the sticks do.

  One nitpick: I dislike the occasional slo-mo close-up shot of the ball barely clearing the net or coming close to leaving the table. It ruins the momentum of the game and has resulted in at least a couple of missed shots for me.

  Sound

  The sounds in the game show Rockstar’s attention to detail. Sound effects are so realistic you don’t even notice them; they simply add to the immersiveness of the game. The ball sounds convincing coming off the paddles and hitting the table, and the characters’ shoes squeak against the floor.

  Crowd noises are incredibly context sensitive. During any given point, the crowd starts out quiet but then starts murmuring and then cheering as a rally goes on longer and longer. Spectators gasp at a high-bouncing lob, anticipating the smash to follow. They frequently boo at a particularly bad shot. And sometimes, when a player is about to win a hard-fought match, they start chanting for him.

  There’s even a sparse soundtrack. Music doesn’t play constantly during a game, but after about the twelfth shot in a rally, techno music fades in to build the intensity. It never becomes distracting, though.

  Live play

  While playing against AI characters is fun and helps you sharpen your skills, local and Live multiplayer show off the game engine to greatest effect. In addition, Xbox Live creates the potential for a great deal of replay value given the lack of depth of the single-player offering.

  There are several Live modes, ranging from a simple one-on-one exhibition game to a multi-player timed tournament. The tournament mode is a welcome addition for gaming communities or clans used to having to organize and/or improvise a tourney. Players are matched randomly for the first game, and then after that, winners play winners and losers play losers. During a tournament with four players, we all played one another until one player ended up on top.

  Unfortunately, there’s no persistent lobby for playing with friends. Once your match is over, whether it’s a quick two-out-of-three or an eight-player tourney, everyone is dumped out when it’s over. To play again with the same friends, one player must create another room and invite opponents back in.

  Players can jump into player matches or ranked ones, and TT has implemented the TrueSkill ranking system for its leaderboard.

  Through all the games, I saw little evidence of lag except for maybe the odd appearance of my opponent in a different place than he’d been an instant ago. Friends also reported to me that occasionally lag would cause the ball to come at them seemingly out of nowhere but that it didn’t affect gameplay much.

  Another nifty feature of Live play is the ability to spectate in other players’ matches. The pace of this game is such that it’s almost as much fun to watch as it is to play.

  The bottom line

  Sports games don’t get much purer than Rockstar’s offering; this is truly a meat-and-potatoes game with a $40 price point that’s hard to beat. If you lack Live, the single-player modes may not give you enough value for your money. But as long as you have friends willing to smash a small, white ball down your throat, the game will be a fresh blast every time you fire it up.

5/30/2006  Tracey 'Jerri Blank' McCartney