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| Source // Rockstar Games |
Sports and video games are an obvious pairing. Rockstar Games and video games also go well together. Rockstar Games and sports, though... that's not a combination you think about all too often, if at all. Thanks to a history of violent video games, the release of Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis turned some heads.
Rockstar? Doing Table Tennis? What? Just... what?
But here it is, in all its simulation glory. The gold standard for table tennis video games. What else would you expect from Rockstar Games?
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
Fun Times
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis is, as you have surely guessed, a table tennis game. But it's not just any old table tennis game, oh no. This is a simulator, where you're going to be spinning and lobbing and smashing ping pong balls over the net to give your opponent something to think about.
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
I'm playing the Xbox 360 version, so it's screenshots from the Flash-based official website for you today (I wonder how long that'll still work for). The controls are fairly simple - at first.
The left stick moves your character, and the right stick can be used to control your paddle if you don't like using the face buttons instead. Your paddle controls the spin you put on the ball, from top and bottom spin to left and right spin, each, of course, impacting the flight of the ball in their own way.
The shoulder buttons are used to modify your shots to be soft or focused, where you can better aim where the ball will go using a deft touch of the left stick.
Wait, doesn't the left stick control your character, though?
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
Frustrations
That's right, it does. When you're not charging up a shot. You've got to charge up your shots? No, you don't have to, but you can, because the game will enter a brief moment of slow-motion to let you react to incoming shots - provided you're somewhere near to hitting the ball in the first place.
Everything can be modified, it seems. You can return a shot with four different spins. You can power those returns up, or merely nudge them back. You can aim those shots, the controller rumbling when you're at risk of missing the edge of the table. If you've built up enough focus reserves, you can use it to bring time to a crawl to make sure you can react in the best way possible.
All of that could happen in the time it takes your opponent to ping your pong. And that's before I mention about incoming spins.
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
Incoming shots will glow with one of the four face button colours, indicating which type of spin it has. If I've followed the tutorials correctly, returning a ball with the same type of spin makes it harder for your opponent. That doesn't make much sense in my head if I'm honest, but I don't really like table tennis, so that's a problem in itself.
If you're using the right stick instead of the face buttons, top and backspin input is reversed, so you'll see an incoming topspin ball, which is green (I think?), which is at the bottom of the controller, so to return a topspin you need to press up on the stick. Or hold it, for a more powerful shot. Or with the left bumper, if you want a softer touch.
Do you see where my brain starts to give up? All of that has to happen if my character is standing in the right place, and that kind of knowledge is something the actual game of table tennis teaches you, more than the game itself.
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
After what I thought was a moderately successful tutorial, I entered an easy tournament, complete with hints and even assists turned on. You can bet I didn't progress past the first match.
The serving bar has two things going on at once, a black marker that whizzes up and down to denote how much power you're going to put into the serve, and a white meter that fills up denoting how much spin you'll be applying.
Let's say you want to put a lot of spin on the ball. All the spin. You let the white bar fill up. Once full, it's then just a case of timing the black bar to be somewhere near the top of the meter to really give it a good thwacking - and all while this is happening, by the way, you can move the left stick to aim your shot.
That black bar goes by really fast, though. So fast that at some point it just stops at the bottom and your character auto serves straight into the net, losing you a point. You don't want to know how many points I lost while serving.
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
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| Source // Rockstar Games |
Like Fight Night Round 3, what I was being presented with was going against what I was expecting. Both are simulators, not really for casual audiences. You'd have thought a harmless bit of ping pong would be a nice game to zone out to, especially when techno music starts amping up as you get a good rally going.
But rallying isn't the point. Scoring a point is the point. You don't want table tennis to be cool, you want it to be over, and it will be, swiftly, if you dare to be in the wrong place or wobble your paddle in the wrong way.
I had high hopes for Table Tennis after the tutorial. Took a few tries on some sections, but mostly for the sake of just making sure I understood what was going on. Dump me in a match, though, and the headless chickens start to appear, and nothing goes right.
That's no fun, no matter how authentic you are to the sport.
Final Word
Is my failure on me or the game? Me, obviously. This isn't a game to hit balls. This is a game to spin them in more ways than you can imagine so that you unlock another coloured shirt for another generic (I hope they're generic) athlete.
There's nothing grand or epic about Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis. It's not about career modes or storylines. It's a game with one control system that it challenges you to master.
Well, I won't be mastering it. I likely won't be playing it again. I've grown more and more accustomed to just saying 'fuck it' and moving on these days. Table Tennis doesn't matter to me. My life is fine having never played it until now and continues to be fine having played it for twenty minutes and failed. I will not lose sleep over it.
But that's not to say it's a terrible game. Not at all. It's a ridiculously elaborate game and an unconventional one from Rockstar. Like usual, however, they've put everything into it. It doesn't feel half-arsed or phoned in (not that I've played any other table tennis games for comparison). If you're looking for a table tennis game, then you must be serious enough to want a serious table tennis simulator. Stop looking, here it is.
I read that the Wii version might be a little kinder to newcomers, but that's still not enough to get me to try again. I just don't care enough about table tennis to want to play more Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, no matter how polished it may be.
Fun Facts
This was the first game to use the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, the foundations for GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption and everything else since.
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, developed by Rockstar San Diego, first released in 2006.
Version played: Xbox 360, 2006.