Previews// Rockstar Presents Table Tennis (Xbox 360)

A ping pong ninja orgy of destruction

Posted 7 Apr 2006 17:40 by
Rockstar's indisputable excitement about the sport, and, by extension, about this videogame, gives us some idea about how and why Rockstar San Diego, the dev team behind Midnight Club and Red Dead Revolver, has managed to produce such a fine, polished piece of next gen software. Table Tennis utilizes R.A.G.E. - the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine - which is an apt name for this awesome piece of technology, as SPOnG’s opponent was soon in a rage of his own, when we began destroying him game after game after game. Best of three? No point. This poor fellow couldn’t get a look in throughout the ping pong ninja orgy of destruction that ensued.

The game is both an accurate simulation of real world table tennis and a fast-moving arcade classic. Each player has four attributes: Spin, Accuracy, Speed and Power – and, whilst that may sound overly simple, it is the combination of these four factors and your mastery over them, which determines the outcome of each quick game.

As we took our first look at the game, we were actually a little bit concerned that the speed of play was, if anything, too quick. Each match seems, when viewing a game, to be over in a flurry of seconds. The beauty of playing the game is that you very quickly adjust to the speed of play. Without actually playing the game you can’t, at first, quite understand how this is possible. Then you realise it is possible purely due to the simple, yet stunningly accurately modeled physics. It feels, as it should, like playing real ping pong.

There are a number of different characters to choose from, each possessing a distinctive style of play. The ones we saw included Mark from England (with a killer backhand smash), Liu Ping from China (a fast little beggar) and the laid-back Luc. Again, as in any decent fighting game, you very soon whittle down the characters to a few favourites who work best, depending upon your favoured style of play. In total there are 11 playable characters, from countries including Japan, Brazil, Sweden, Egypt and the U.S. Oh, and for tech spec obsessives amongst you – each character contains around 30,000 polygons. To say they are realistic is an understatement. And, while it’s a phrase that just doesn’t role off SPOnG’s tongue very easily, the ‘cloth physics’ in the movement of player’s clothes really is second to none.

There are also a number of different arenas in the game – including some training arenas and well-known international competition venues - all beautifully rendered in jaw-dropping, high-res detail. One of the first things you will think about this game is that the reflections, the lighting effects and the shadows are like nothing you have ever seen before in any sports title. Period.

We played across a number of the locations, including Liberty Northside Prep in the US, National Table Tennis Auditorium in China and Saint Nazaire Coliseum in France. All in all there are 19 unique venues, complete with crowds that chant your name in support and react, well, exactly like a live audience does. SPOnG sees a pattern emerging here.

But hold on! Here is a strange thing: As soon as you get sucked into the game, you are only concentrating on the ball, your opponent and on your next move. Nothing else matters. The accompanying PR blurb, for once, is bang on the money, telling us: “Table Tennis is a distillation of game design philosophy, focusing on removing the traditional areas of compromise inherent in managing size and scope and concentrating the hardware’s entire power on one activity, with the aim of doing that better than it’s ever been done before.”
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