TopSpin 2K25 Review

thesixthaxis.com:

After a thirteen year hiatus, the TopSpin series is back with TopSpin 2K25, and with the weighty moment-to-moment gameplay still at its core, it’s a tennis game revival that doesn’t disappoint.

TopSpin’s gameplay has always stood out among the bevy of tennis games available, with its weighty movement and ball smacking mechanics that just get better the more you practise – something I absolutely needed after not playing a tennis game since the early 2010s. To help players get back into the swing of things, TopSpin 2K25 comes with an excellent Academy mode.

Tennis Legend, John McEnroe guides you through the basics, starting you off slow and eventually building you up to the heavier stuff. Academy mode recognises that the games mechanics aren’t going to be easy to get to grips with and shows a lot of patience in the structure with McEnroe coaching you – famously not a patient player, but a much calmer influence here. Mistakes will be made, I was told a lot, but learning takes time.

Even when I hit the courts to face other players, it took me a while to become good at the game, showing that perseverance pays off. At a certain point, it just clicked and all of a sudden I was smashing perfect balls past my opponent who only just made my last ball.

Serving comes in three flavours, with your basic tap to serve being the go to for beginners, before moving onto the meatier power serve. This is done by holding down one of the four shot buttons which then displays two subtle meters for power and timing. That’s generally fine, but what really requires mastery is using the left stick to aim, which I struggled to do as the UI was split between two parts of the screen, making keeping an eye on both difficult. You can’t just hold ‘up right’ and hope for the best, as it will just send the ball at max power outside the court. It becomes instinctive with enough play, but it took me a fair chunk of time before this happened. It might be quicker for others, but I still think the power bar