Summary

  • Top Spin has made a long awaited comeback, but I'm on the fence about whether to get the latest edition.
  • Watching Challengers highlighted the passion and power sports has over us.
  • In the end, it's always about the love of the game.

I'm still not sure what to make of Top Spin's return. I dabbled in the original four games, and as an ardent sports fan, it's nice to see the series make a comeback. But having been away since 2011, it does not look like a game that has absorbed 13 years' worth of technological advancements.

From trailers alone, it doesn't seem to match up to its cousin NBA 2K's sweat-dripping realism. It's also expensive for a game I'm not going to play much between titles I need to beat for work, especially considering this may be the one and only time I write about it. Yet I'm still tempted, and that temptation has only grown since watching Challengers.

Some will tell you that Luca Guadagnino's latest film is not really about tennis at all. It's about love, passion, betrayal, and how difficult it is to grow as a person when surrounded by people you grew up with, and grew up loving. These things are all true, but ultimately it’s about tennis more than anything else. I see some commentators distancing the sport from the narrative, perhaps knowing that sport is not the universal connector it masquerades as, or understanding that tennis is relatively niche with its 15, 30, 40, 60 (but never actually say '60') scoring method. But sport cannot be separated from love.

Everything In Challengers Is About Tennis

This is what makes Challengers so great. I love sport - any sport, and everything about it. Challengers is not a movie about things that happen to three tennis players. It's about three tennis players. That is who they all are, above all things. Challengers is a celebration of the emotions sport can conjure within us all, and it’s these feelings that have me reconsidering Top Spin 2K25.

There is a deep romance, one beyond a simple boy meets girl (or boys meets girl) love story, to Challengers. Guadagnino has always told these sorts of moving stories, and as a Call Me By Your Name die-hard and Bones & All defender, Challengers did not disappoint. It is the human, intimate moments that are most moving, but these only connect with the audience because we know these characters live in the same world, a world different from ours, a world of grunts and screams and sweat and muscles and longing stares. A world of tennis.

The most beautiful sequences in the movie are when the camera becomes tennis - we see out of Art's eyes, out of Patrick's, out of Tashi's. We see the unimportant literal details of the game melt away to see it for what it really is; as Tashi calls it in the film, "a relationship". The camera beneath the court feeling each pounding footstep, the camera in the ball feeling each thrash of the racquet. Slow motion, fast motion - the game not as it is, but as it will be remembered by its players.

The Best Sports Games Capture The Feeling Of Sports, Not The Events

via 2K

Challengers is not supposed to be a perfect recreation of tennis, but a loving representation of it. That is what a video game is too. Over the years, there have been far more realistic football games than FIFA/EA FC, but none have understood the passion of boot on ball half as well. It's also why I have a lot of time for the weirder Mario sports like the Olympics' recreation of rugby sevens, but was left disappointed by the empty gimmicks of Mario Strikers: Battle League.

That brings me back to Top Spin. It is not as lifelike as 2K's high-flying basketball sim, but then NBA has slowly diluted itself with MMO-style meanders through sponsorship villages and become too much of the game as it is than recreating the perfect apexes of emotion a simple swish offers to fans. Top Spin 2K25 seems more stripped back, it seems more about tennis, true tennis, than the pointless additions eventually mandated by yearly sports sims.

The chances are I won't play Top Spin all that much. I may never write about it again. I won't get my money's worth out of it the way I have Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth or Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth this year. I won't even get the return on time and money investment I get from EA FC and my true beloved in all of sportsdom, the World's Game itself. But maybe I should buy it anyway. Like Art, Patrick, and Tashi, maybe I should just do it for the love of the game.

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Top Spin 2K25

Sports Systems 2.5/5 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 75/100 Critics Rec: 63% Released April 23, 2024 ESRB Everyone // In-Game Purchases, Users Interact Developer(s) Hangar 13 Publisher(s) 2K Games Engine game engine
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WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL
PHYSICAL

Top Spin 2K25 revives the classic tennis simulation series, and now part of the 2K sports franchise. It features all four Grand Slams, MyCAREER mode, and a who's who of top pros - from Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek to legends such as Roger Federer and Serena Williams.

Platform(s) PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Powered by Expand Collapse