Rockstar misrepresents Table Tennis for the Wii

So what is the difference between table tennis (ping pong) and tennis? How does a company make that transition from hitting a tennis ball to a 40mm ping pong ball? Rockstar first tried this game on the xbox 360 and there was a pretty good following so the translation to the Wii was only inevitable.More...

Graphics:
For a Wii game, the visuals are actually pretty good. The fun factor of the game isn’t reduced because of the graphics so I would give Rockstar credit for not making the game hard on the eyes. Part of the strategy is being able to see the different color spins in the game and Rockstar did a good job of it. Sure, you’re not going to be able to see the spin when it’s being smashed at you but the frame rate is fast enough that there aren’t any hiccups during gameplay.

Gameplay:
The strategy aspect of ping pong isn’t as deep as tennis. In tennis there are different players that are baseline players, net players, all around players, quick players, hard hitters, and strong servers. Sure there is some of that in ping pong but there really isn’t a fear of someone getting aced on a serve in ping pong nor do you really worry about someone having very quick feet. Ping pong is more of a twitch reflex game and that is why I think Rockstar missed the ball on this one.

In this game, you don’t really need to time your swings or even swing harder to get more power. The game states even in training you need to watch the color of the spin (forward, backward, left and right spins) and duplicate that spin back to the opponent. I found that isn’t even necessary to win even in hard mode. Sure I’ll miss some shots because of it but normally the ball is moving so fast you’re not going to have the reaction time to match the color. Sometimes matching the color still makes you hit the ball out.

Swinging the wii mote isn’t really necessary as you can make very small hand gestures to point where you want to hit the ball. Since swinging harder and faster isn’t necessary, all you need to do is perform the swing right after the opponent swings. So basically you’re swinging a good while before your character swings. This disconnect is the major turn off for me in the game. When I swing my wii remote I want my character to swing too, but if you want to charge your shots you have to be holding the spin button and swinging after the opponent does and not when your character should be swinging. That was the nail in the coffin for me. After smashing the computer on hard after only playing 1-2 hrs I was pretty disappointed to how easy the game was.

The music got very annoying after playing a couple hours. The cell phone ringing during a match was a good touch and someone yelling your character's name between serves was nice.

Bug Alert:
Not even sure this is a bug but the intro to the game is very long. From the moment you actually click the wii icon to play this game to actually being able to select your profile takes forever. You can't skip the intro and it does this long movie style credits to how two different Rockstar studios made this. I don't give a crap that Rockstar San Diego worked on this title. I want to be able to skip all that junk and get to playing. The load times are a bit long but the intro loading sequence is borderline painful to sit through every time you want to play.

Closing:
I can not recommend this game to any ping pong purest and only people who want to try it out should apply. If your thinking this is wii sports tennis with some more strategy you are sorely mistaken. You don’t even move the character as it moves for you like in wii sports. Granted there is a control scheme that allows for the nunchuk to be attached but I wasn’t interested in trying it out. The delay in timing your swing and not being forced to countering spins really makes this game pretty shallow.

Recommended: No (2/5 Stars)