Top Spin 3 (Xbox 360)

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The game looks incredible

That's Andy Roddick's serve. Right there in front of me, on a big screen LCD. It's unmistakably Andy Roddick's serve. That arched back, that unusual posture, that snap as the racket hits the ball... it couldn't be anyone else's. And I thought Wimbledon was over.

Turns out I'm watching something better than Wimbledon. I'm watching two developers from Paris-based studio PAM Development smash a tennis ball at each other in an "80%-ish" complete build of Top Spin 3, the latest version of Virtua Tennis's main rival in the ongoing battle to be the video game world's tennis number one.

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Back to that serve. It's probably the most realistic and convincing replication of a real-life sporting move I've seen in a video game. If nothing else Top Spin 3 looks great, with fluid, varied animations and realistic player movement and ball physics. Real-time fatigue is something I can see clearly on-screen, conveyed through sweat, puffed, red cheeks and the way players sluggishly change direction as the match wears on. It all makes for perhaps the nicest looking tennis game yet. And it's even more impressive given that tennis games on the whole seem to have trouble serving up high-quality presentation - something PAM tells us they're working hard to reverse.

Francois Giuntini, the game's creative director, begins my TS3 presentation by taking me through the enhanced player creation, which, according to community feedback, was too overwhelming in previous iterations of the series. So the team's focus this time round was to make it easier to create a tennis player that looked as good as the developer-created pros while at the same time retain depth for those of us who love to slave over forehead inclines and cheekbone positions.

You have loads of pre-set faces to choose from as well as a range of hairstyles that would make a Shoreditch barber have a heart-attack. If you want you can stick with the pre-set stuff and jump straight into the game, or you can take your pre-set tennis player into the advanced Free Form option and get your hands dirty with numerous sliders, a bit like shaping clay after your tutor has started the ball rolling.

No tennis game before has nailed the movement of players like TS3

This is all well and good, but making player customisation more efficient won't be what convinces tennis obsessives to part with their cash. It'll be how the game plays. And here PAM, from what we've seen, looks like it has implemented not revolutionary but sensible changes to the Top Spin gameplay mechanic aimed at making it play more like the real game.

In TS3 your position in relation to the ball affects the quality of your return. You press the button, adjust to the ball's trajectory, prepare yourself for the shot and release when you want to smack it cross court. Poor position will result in a poor shot - if you take a shot and the ball bounces too far ahead of you, that stumble forward and scoop thing you see the pros do on TV kicks in and the ball won't be returned with any real impact. And if you misjudge the bounce of the ball so it lands at your feet you'll get that surprised quick flick ground stroke that loads of tennis players seem to dump into the net. Conversely, hitting the perfect shot is all about getting into a good position before you hit the ball. Do that and you'll give yourself the best chance of smacking that baby down the line for a winner.

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