The battle for tennis videogame supremacy mirrors the real life rivalry between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Both the Top Spin and Virtua Tennis series are excellent in their own right. 2K Sports served up Top Spin 2 on the Xbox 360 in 2006, and like its predecessor was a highly playable and realistic tennis simulator. Sega returned with Virtua Tennis 3 in 2007, raising the bar in terms of next-gen graphics, and continuing in the arcade traditions of the series. Can Top Spin 3 hit a winner and take the victory spoils?

Top Spin 3 will be the first game in the series to be released on the PlayStation3, but this review covers the Xbox 360 version only. A Wii version also exists but is built on a different engine to the PS3/360 version.

The first thing you will notice when you start Top Spin 3 is the graphics. They are really quite stunning and the character animations are at times almost life-like on a high definition TV. You will play on no less than 40 different courts around the world during your career, and each is reproduced faithfully with an amazing level of detail.

Anyone who has played a console tennis game before (or even Rockstar’s Table Tennis), will be instantly familiar with the basic controls. Left stick moves your player, while any of the 4 face buttons hit the ball using one of the 4 basic strokes – “normal”, slice, topspin, or lob. Unique to the Top Spin series is the concept of a “high risk/high reward” shot, and this makes a return in Top Spin 3. Combine the left trigger, right trigger, or both, with one of the face buttons and you will attempt a riskier shot that requires perfect timing but may win you a rally if done right. The bumpers are used for sprinting back to the central baseline, or for rushing the net. New to the game is the option to use the right control stick to serve. Pull down and then up with good timing (mimicking the action of the serving arm) to deliver serves. You can also use the right stick to play lobs and drop shots, but it’s far easier to keep your thumb on the face buttons and use those instead of constantly reaching back and forth.

Those who have played tennis will know that hitting a tennis ball sweetly relies on a number of basic principles: footwork, positioning of the body in relation to the ball, timing of the stroke, and aim. Get any of these wrong and you are likely to mishit the ball into the net or out of bounds. Why am I giving you a tennis coaching lesson in the middle of a review? Well, this game really is a tennis simulator rather than an arcade game, and playing the game requires you to be familiar with these principles.

Player movements are strongly influenced by momentum, so you won’t be able to shift your player’s weight quickly to change directions if you have been wrong footed. End up too far from the ball when you play a stroke and you won’t have control of the shot. Pressing a shot button prepares your stroke, but you will need to release the button just after the ball lands in front of you to hit it with good timing. Get the timing wrong and again your ball could end up anywhere. Finally, basic strokes will be hit well within the boundaries of the court, but in order to win points you will need to eventually use “risk” shots. Careful control of the left stick is required here because even the faintest of touches will send your shot out of the court.

If it all sounds very complicated, believe me it is. Let me make it clear now that this game is very hard. You won’t be able to jump straight into an exhibition match and expect to win any games, even if you use Federer against a lowly ranked opponent. Even veterans of the Top Spin series may find themselves struggling without putting in some training hours at the Top Spin School. The game is very realistic, and as a tennis player I can appreciate the little touches that are featured. However the game might be just a little too clever for itself, as those without the patience to learn the game will lose interest quickly.

There is a lengthy career mode where you create a player from scratch and try to take him or her to the number 1 world ranking. There is a decent player creation centre but no EA-esque option to upload your mugshot and have the work done automatically. The career mode is calendar-based and fundamentally no different to the career mode of other sports games. Each month you choose from a number of events to participate in, or can choose to rest. Unlike Top Spin 2, you are no longer forced to train in order to improve your skills – placing well in tournaments gives you experience points that level up your player, as well as giving you “unlock points” to purchase clothes for the fashion conscious.

The career mode is well set up, and at first it was a relief to see that training is not forced upon you in order to level up. However after a while, it felt a little monotonous without the training games thrown in to add variety. Training is optionally performed at the Top Spin School but isn’t exactly fun – it is definitely lesson based rather than making use of quirky tennis mini-games like those made famous by Virtua Tennis.

Tournament mode allows you play in tournaments across the world, but there is no option to play doubles with a friend on the same console. Exhibition matches can be played by 1-4 players with any of the included pros in the game, including classic players Bjorn Borg, Boris Becker, and Monica Seles. Top Spin 3 features the services of Rafael Nadal, but he comes as a PlayStation3 exclusive, which has angered some gamers. Not being able to play a Nadal vs. Federer match does leave somewhat of a shallow feeling to the game.

When you think you are good enough, you can take your career mode player online to play in online tournaments and ranked matches. Rankings and tournaments reset themselves every 2 weeks, so there is an opportunity for everyone to have their moment of glory. Missing from the online ranked play is a doubles mode - apparently there were lag considerations behind this decision. Unfortunately this did not help my experiences with the in-game lag, which was ever present. Doubles can be played online, but only in unranked matches. Not only this, but it requires that your partner to also have their own Xbox Live Gold subscription, which is an appalling requirement.

Overall Top Spin 3 is an incredible accomplishment. Top Spin veterans will be pleased to know that the “fixed camera” issue is now gone, and every point will be played with the camera behind you as the player. Everything in the game oozes realism. Balls actually get mishit rather than always being hit perfectly, and balls can even hit the players themselves. The only negatives I could find were that ball boys, while present on court, don’t actually do anything, and it was also a shame that balls never hit the net and go over the net. Perhaps the physics of that is still too complicated? Finally, the lack of proper doubles modes will be disappointing to many.

Top Spin 3 is the perfect example of why giving scores for games (eg. x/10) is meaningless and futile. As a tennis player who appreciates the finer details of this game, I found the game to be excellent in almost every area. The game is highly realistic, but perhaps to its detriment. Some will accuse it of being far too complicated, and many will be put off by the high level of difficulty. If you loved Top Spin 2, and welcome the difficulty that comes with the added realism of the game, then you should buy this game immediately. If you’ve struggled to make it to the end of this review, consider a rental first – then you might consider Virtua Tennis 3 instead.

Good points: Huge number of highly detailed court environments (40!), amazing realism and deep gameplay.

Bad points: Steep learning curve will put many gamers off, no Rafa Nadal.

Bottom line: If you are looking for the best tennis simulator game available today, you won’t be mistaken buying Top Spin 3.

• Geekpulp reviews for Virtua Tennis 3 are available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation3.