Moving onto the characters, what are we going to see that is more advanced?

Firstly Top Spin 3 Had the great addition of an in-depth player creator tool, allowing the gamer to create his/her very own character. Anthony was asked whether or not the Xbox 360 camera was going to be supported in this feature which he said unfortunately not, due to the fact that in development it just didn’t work, instead they concentrated on what they did best and that is the articulation of the customisable players.

They also had a wish list of players they would love to work within the game; they worked very closely with the tennis players who were really enthusiastic about the project, which made the whole process even more pleasurable.

He went on to mention they really went to town on the ‘Focus testing’ for each character, making sure they had each players signature style exact, from their backswing to the style of play i.e. baseline attacker. The player’s attributes were broken down so that it is more realistic, for example, not all players will be good on clay, so this is another aspect to be looked at when choosing what character you want to play with.

He also said they worked very closely with the players in photo shoots and again focus testing to really capture the characters physical form and looking at the screenshots of the game you can clearly see this. Each characters signature style will be clearly visible when playing the game, they broke down each player to capture their style and attributes.

There is also no difference between men and women, it’s all based on the player individually, so there will be no benefit in being a male player against a woman, it’s all down to how the player performs on the particular court and their attributes.

As mentioned earlier the player can become sweaty and tired, there is 1500 different animations in Top Spin 3, Anthony said that with Top Spin 2, they had created the Xbox 360 version not knowing the full capability of such a console. Now knowing the hardware they were able to make everything on a much higher level. So now they were able to really make an effort and focus on the animation of the characters.

They have altered the selection of players slightly, they have the same selection as last time, but they have now included a legends collection, including such players as Boris Becker, Monica Seles and Bjorn Borg.

One thing I have to mention for all tennis and Nadal fans, sadly he is not available on the Xbox 360 version, only on the PS3.