Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis

When a console is new-- or new to you-- one of the things you might do is pick up a game just to have something to futz with. In the old days, the NES included Super Mario Bros., and the GameBoy included Tetris. The Xbox 360 includes Hexic and generally little else-- you've got to go out and buy that first retail game on your own. We picked up Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis on the cheap due to largely favorable reviews. Given its high score on Metacritic and Rockstar's generally good track record, how could I say no?

It's possible I'm too dense to enjoy this kind of game, but I don't like it. It features a large amount of very nicely rendered players, fast action, and a number of moves to make it interesting, but it basically plays more than a little like that old electronic game Simon-- minus the cool beeps and memorization. You have to basically smack the ball back, and once you figure out the controls, the game itself is more than a little repeat-happy. It's a lot of the same thing, going on for hours, with different players. There's no attempt at eccentricity, like the characters in Punch-Out!!, nor is there much life behind the eerily realistic competitors. Basically, it's a glorified ping pong sim.

The developers no doubt put tons of work into this. The animation is great, the sound effects are excellent, and most of it fits together really well. This is an incredibly smooth production with a great tutorial, lovely online options, and scores of unlockables. I just can't find myself pretending to care in the slightest. While many laud it as a great achievement, I put somewhere around four hours into the game and basically threw up my arms. Like Sega's Sonic R, this was another clearance find destined to piss me off. I can see why people enjoy it, it's just that the controls and, ultimately, the subject matter don't grab me. Your mileage may vary but I feel I lost $10 here, and I'm not sure exactly the world sees in this game. It feels like it may have made for a better arcade game, although I don't think people would really want to stand in line to play it when they could be at another cabinet perfecting their Yoga Fire.

The game is presently widely available for $20 or less, it started life at $39.99. It's not uncommon to be able to find it new for $10, but I haven't seen it for less than that at press time.

Cost: $10 (clearance, Kmart)
Value: Low
Novelty: Low
Would buy again if given the chance: Unlikely