by: Billy Kirk

January 15, 2008

Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis for the Xbox 360 is one of those games that just catches you by surprise. It’s announced, it receives minimal press coverage, it lands on store shelves at a discount price…and it’s a solid and addictive title. However, it isn’t one without its grave faults, either.
For a cool forty* bucks, the gamer is understandably not going to get a ton of beef for their cashola. Table Tennis is lean and mean, with an Exhibition Mode (for quick play), Tournament Mode, Xbox Live Mode, Training Mode, Extras Mode, and Options (give it up for Options Mode, ladies and gents). The Extras Mode features your game stats and chronicles your Unlocked Items as well as your Achievements, and also sports a Character Viewer which allows the player to select a ping pong master and zoom in and out on him/her for a better look (sadly, up skirt shots are not included for the lonely). Training Mode is what you would expect – a simple computer guided run-through of the game’s basic and more advanced mechanics. Despite the simple nature of it, a jaunt through this mode can actually aid the beginning or mediocre player. Extras and Training is as much fluff as will be found in the game, though; the rest of the modes get right down to fundamental business.
When gamers are ready to test their abilities, there are three main modes of interest. The first is Exhibition. Here, players will select a difficulty level, a character (only a few are selectable at the beginning), and one of two clothing options, and jump straight into the game for immediate fun. Would-be ping pong gurus play a default two eleven point games against a single opponent, which is selectable by the user. Number of points per game and games per match can be altered via the Options menu. Aside from this, the mode is straightforward, get down to business I-don’t-have-much-time-so-give-me-a-quick-thrill fare.



Where the meat and potatoes of the game lie – or perhaps in this case the corn beef and potatoes – is in Tournament Mode. Tournament Mode is exactly what it sounds like – a series of matches played in sequence that will eventually find the gamer in the World Championships, if they are so inclined and if they are talented enough. This mode shouldn’t be confused at all with a World Tour type experience, however, as it is much skimpier and direct. There’s no training your ping ponger (yeah, yeah, we know, not a word), no earning cash to buy items, and no manually jet setting across continents. The matches are automatically set up back to back and it’s your job to find a way through the guy or gal at the other end of that short, green netted table.
The first Circuit gamers tackle is the Amateur Circuit, which is precisely as advertised – easy. There are four “Regional” matches in this circuit, and gamers should blow right by them. Matters swiftly escalate from here though, with the Rookie Circuit comprised of three Regional matches and three National matches, and the very difficult Pro Circuit consisting of the above, plus three World matches. Although this doesn’t sound like much, the later matches can take a lot of time to get through, and those skilled enough to complete all three can unlock the extra-hard All-Star Circuit, which adds at least some needed constitution to the Tournament Mode setup. Once you’re done or tired with Tournament Mode, there’s nothing else to keep you occupied unless you take your game online, which is a viable way to greatly extend replay value.
The first thing you’ll notice upon entering any of your matches is how spiffy the graphics are. Seeing as Rockstar had only two characters to focus on, each are impressively modeled and are among the best sports models in any 360 game. The environments, while understandably sparse as they feature essentially only a ping pong table, are still well designed, realistic, and feature convincing lighting and reflective attributes. Further touches really add to the look of the title as well, with players gradually beginning to sweat more and more as the match progresses and becomes more heated; clear darkening of shirts will begin to occur in spots as rallies drag on. Animation is mostly very lifelike (more on this later), and frame rate is smooth and never hitches up. Realistic cloth physics on the characters’ clothes also adds another dimension to it all.