The idea of an old great coming out of retirement right when their team needs them most is the stuff of movies rather than real life sport, and with Top Spin 2K25, the jury is still out on how realistic that feelgood story is for video games.
13 years after Top Spin 4, we're still waiting on a halfway decent tennis sim to arrive. Top Spin 2K25 fills that void, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Is its serve a little rusty, or have its legs gone? After spending a lot of time with the game, I'm still not sure.
Tennis is a game of fundamentals, and Top Spin 2K25 nails its drills. Actually being on the court feels great, with an intuitive timing meter, good range of shots, and sensible difficulty curve. In the decade plus since the last entry, Top Spin 4 has remained the go-to answer for 'best tennis game'. Mario Tennis Aces and others like it bring some arcade spirit, but for true tennis, Top Spin has always been the only game in town. 2K25 is a worthy evolution of that name, and that gives the game an overall baseline of quality. Unfortunately, every other part of the experience detracts from this single strength.
Top Spin 2K25 Is Missing Some Key Players
First off, there's the roster. It's woefully lacking, not just in number but in common sense. Name a tennis player. Novak Djokovic, you say? Yeah, he's not there. The world number one is not alone in this - eight of the men's top ten are currently absent from the game with just Alcaraz and Medvedev featured. Some legends (Federer, Agassi, McEnroe) beef it out a bit, but Rafa Nadal, the most popular player of the modern era, also misses out.
It's no better on the women's side - though there are some crowd pleasing players present despite their current low rank like Emma Raducanu or Naomi Osaka, again just two of the top ten (Gauff and Świątek) are included. Legends are similarly scattergun too - Serena but no Venus, Sharapova but no Henin, Cljisters, or Hingis, Graf but no Seles, Navratilova, or King... I understand there are licensing issues involved, but it's still a very barren offering at present, especially with other features so limited too. Likeness is also worse than other sports games despite the smaller roster.
But fear not! More pros are coming. How, you ask? Why, as part of the battle pass, of course! Who ever heard of a tennis game without a battle pass? Though they call it the Centre Court Pass to feel a little less money grubbing, you're immediately channelled into a world of virtual currency and replay-inducing mechanics that currently only unlock new outfits for your created character and custom animations to give them - many pros lack their own unique flair, with these also coming soon.
Top Spin 2K25 Desperately Needs A Tournament Mode (Or Any Mode)
When I reviewed NBA 2K22, I called it a "great basketball game that doesn't want to be a basketball game", owing to the way it funnels you into online play with its weird MMO playground where you're meant to be impressed that you can chat to Jake from State Farm. Top Spin wants to make the same mistake, but it’s so bereft of any content it is stuck as just a tennis game with a lot of modern live-service bells and whistles, all playing discordant notes at the wrong volume.
Aside from the huge box pushing you to look at the Centre Court Pass, there are two offline options at the moment. The first is the career mode with a created pro, and the second is a standard exhibition match. Too much of the former is linked to the latter - though all the pros are available from the start, you only have a meagre amount of courts and must win on them in career mode to unlock them, which for some will include dozens of hours of play, especially as you must play at each time of day to fully unlock a court.
Some Career Mode Highlights
CloseThe game is at least sensible enough to give you the four Grand Slam courts from the start, but the lack of a tournament mode makes them a little pointless. There's no tournament mode, so I couldn't take Emma Raducanu all the way from the first round to Wimbledon glory. I can play a game at Wimbledon, but that's hardly the same thing.
As for the career mode itself, that's too thin as well. Fully Challengers-pilled, I made Tashi Duncan, complete with knee brace. It starts off okay, with some training drills to make it feel like you're a new pro starting out and some low level tournaments against NPCs to climb the rankings, but that's all there is to it. There's no narrative the way we get in NBA 2K, no sense of growth, and all the gimmicks like air travel tiring you out and goals from the coach (which help advance the battle pass) quickly grow tiresome as the matches repeat and all of the venues and challenges blur into one with little to show for it.
Finally, the online mode. I had planned to play against TheGamer's own George Foster, who you can see in the video above, but right now it's impossible to play friends online. That aside, the online functionality is fine, though the relatively small playerbase and sharp difficulty curve means casual players will be more noticeably outclassed. However, it's a pretty big aside in a sports game that you can't beat your friends.
They say form is temporary, class is permanent. And there is a baseline class to Top Spin, a great-feeling tennis game underneath any of the other complaints. But it's in very poor form, making unforced errors, double-faulting, and missing volleys. It's hard to recommend Top Spin 2K25 when there are so many simple features missing and a sour-tasting battle pass, but it's hard not to recommend Top Spin 2K25 when it's the best rally to rally tennis game I've ever played.
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Reviewed on PS5
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 GamesWHERE TO PLAY
DIGITALTop 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 Expand Collapse Pros & Cons- Best tennis game on the market
- Only tennis game on the market
- Pointless battle pass
- Not enough pros or modes
