Let’s get it out of the way: no, Top Spin 3 isn’t better than Virtua Tennis 3. You won’t have as much fun playing it, it doesn’t look as nice (in fact, the visuals are disappointingly bland) and the single-player mode isn’t half as inventive. If you want the best tennis-related PS3 game, go with Sega’s acclaimed arcade-’em-up.

Unless, of course, you want a side order of realism with your gameplay. When comparing the two games, it’s important to understand what they’re both attempting. Virtua is busy being an accessible but hard-to-master videogame, whereas Top Spin 3’s ambitions lie in being a tennis simulator. Rare is the occasion you will hit the net in Virtua, rarer still the occasion you perform an ace. Not so with Top Spin. Particularly during those frustrating, often confounding, opening few games, 2K’s racket-sport sim has more unforced errors than a year’s worth of Virtua Tennis would. Once you get past those first hurdles, however, Top Spin 3, as its predecessor did, can become quite satisfying.

As before, various shots are attributed to different face buttons with variations offered through set combinations. There is a slight difference from before, with the length of time each button is held down for now crucial to the success of each shot, the idea being players now control the entire shot – back swing and all – rather than triggering what’s essentially a convincing animation. A consequence of this is that positioning is of paramount importance; failure to get to grips with this side of the system will mean few successful shots, and much less joy. It can be a cruel game too, with immense concentration required at all times. Indeed, often you feel as though you’d have a better chance against the real Federer after you’d just spat in his face and pinched his nipple. Really hard.

Make no mistake, the learning curve is steep and the conditions unforgiving. Getting things right is incredibly rewarding, but it will take a while before that happens, and few modes demonstrate this better than Career mode. It’s intimidating stuff and throughout it’s more than tempting to give up and pop in Sega’s friendlier disc, but the challenge is just about exciting enough for it to be worthwhile and the feeling of a love game against an esteemed opponent fills you with a pleasant smugness.

As you might have predicted, this is not for fans of pick-up-and-play titles and neither is it necessarily for fans of other tennis games, but for those with the determination and dexterity of an actual tennis player, it offers plenty.

Aaron Asadi