http://www.pastapadre.com/2011/01/18/top-spin-4-trailer-and-roster-reveal (http://www.pastapadre.com/2011/01/18/top-spin-4-trailer-and-roster-reveal)
Roster: Andre Agassi, Bjorn Borg, Roger Federer, Jim Courier, Rafael Nadal, Boris Becker, Serena Williams, Patrick Rafter, Michael Chang, Dinara Safina, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic, Ivan Lendel, Pete Sampras, Andy Roddick, James Blake, Caroline Wozniacki, Nikolay Davydenko, Gilles Simon, Bernard Tomic, Eugenie Bouchard, Stanislas Wawrinka, Vera Zvonareva, and Jelena Jankovic.
Gamestop is also offering a pre-order bonus of a “vintage†Andre Agassi and so far no other retailers have listed any pre-order deals of their own. Continue on to check out the trailer and leave any thoughts in the comments!
IGN Preview
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/114/1149875p1.html (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/114/1149875p1.html)
I was under the impression that the Top Spin series used the right-stick for hitting the ball, but that wasn't available in the demo. Was I thinking of another tennis game?
Top Spin 3 let you hit serves and drop shots/lobs with it but it was better to stick with the buttons, especially on the serve as you could get a more powerful serve.
This game is really growing on me at the harder difficulty. The only knock is that it only takes a year to nearly max out your stats. I am currently an 18 out of 20. Played online tonight against randoms and outside of one quitter I had some really good matches. No lag whatsoever. I was always at a disadvantage as I used my player and all my opponents used pros but I won all but one game. In my last match I lost the first set 3-0 to a guy playing as Andy Roddick and was a master at serving with him. In the second set I decided to back up a bit and use the slice to return his serves and it worked wonders. I was able to win the second set 3-3 on tiebreak and won the super tie break to win the match. Plenty of forced and unforced errors. Even with the CPU you get plenty of these and every so often you hit the net when returning/volley. The best part is that the emphasis is on breaking the serve. The server is at an advantage, as it should be with most returns being hit at a slower speed than previous games even on a perfect return. There are no cheats that I have seen so far and with no risk shots and how points are distributed, it becomes a more competitive game.
In news that will only affect me.
Top Spin 4 patch
2K Sports has released the full list of changes that accompany the patch for Top Spin 4 that arrived today for both the Xbox 360 and PS3. The patch addresses issues with and provides improvements for general gameplay, online play, and World Tour career mode.
XBOX 360 General
- User modified profiles are now detectable and cheaters will be banned.
- Dpad control is now enabled.
- Fixed a bug where Control Shot icon does not disappear in cutscene.
- Rude words are now properly filtered when combined with other letters.
- Sparring Partner Training text is now displayed properly in Spanish version of the game.
- Music tracks no longer overlap in specific cases.
- Coach info is now properly displayed.
- “Percentage Tennis 6 points†unlock description is now always displayed properly.
- Fixed a bug where camera settings weren’t saved properly.
- Vera Zvonareva hair and depth of field on racket bug has been fixed.
- Directional pad control is now enabled for player movement.
General Online
- Fixed a bug where user wasn’t given the Join Session popup when invited by a friend during or after the loading screen and is taken into Online gameplay.
- Fixed a bug where players were invisible in entering cutscene after rematching online match.
- Fixed a bug where client was unable to exit player match properly when he has accepted invite in “Controller assign screenâ€
- User now gets “Connection lost†message way faster than before if connection to opponent is lost during replay.
- Fixed a bug where ping icons were not displayed correctly.
- Fixed a bug where bad connection or lags caused player movement animation to be interrupted.
- Fixed a bug where Strict NAT settings would cause users to get stuck in the lobby with the message “Looking for best opponent…â€.
World Tour
- User no longer receives “No Opponents were found before the countdown timer ended. Please try again later.†when leaving the match lobby before countdown reaches 0.
- Fixed the case when the 8th player joins a lobby right before the countdown ends, they will appear to be in their own lobby yet still connect to another player correctly.
- The game no longer crashes when re-entering World Tour from gender select menu after forfeiting Sparring Partner Training.
- Fixed a bug where user and CPU players were stuck in the net after loading World Tour Sparring Partner Training.
- The B button is now unavailable to be pressed after player selects “PLAY†option in Sparring Partner Training in World Tour.
- Male players are now able to see correct stats of female players in World Tour and vice versa.
- Fixed various game crashes in World Tour Sparring Partner Training.
- Entering World Tour no longer causes 2K open rating reset in specific cases.
- Player name is now always properly displayed in Select screen in World Tour.
- The player saved on the memory card is now present on the selection screen in World Tour when starting the game with the memory card.
Player Match
- Fixed a bug where it was unable to invite a friend to Player match lobby when disconnected from Sparring Partner Training during gameplay.
Offline modes
- Points gained from tournaments in Career mode are now calculated properly for user and AI players.