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Vice Blog

Video Games Killed the Radio Star - Table Tennis

Rockstar Games Presents – Table Tennis XBOX 360
I’m guessing there’ll be a pretty large and vocal “Ping pong’s gay” contingency when this fella comes out, but honestly, does anyone care about these guys? People who actually get upset over what games video game companies decide to put out, as if some incredible new black-ops dress-up game had to be wiped from each disc to make space for this cuddly little gem? Anybody who’s ever let “gamers” in any way influence how they live their lives needs to get with a little program called not caring what 14-year-olds have to say about things and start enjoying pleasant crap like this without shame.

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The game starts a little slow, not because of bad design or anything, it just takes a while to figure out all the controls and learn which spins and hits work best for which situations. Kind of like real ping pong. Then, once you’ve gotten comfy with the basics, you can start branching out and trying new and more complex variations, all the while unlocking cool hidden characters like Rat Fink and former president Clinton and crazy new moves like the Whirling Dervish and the Serve of Ages.

From there shit really takes off, with a cyborg-run pro shop where you can buy upgrades for your paddle and weird kaleidoscopic multi-table games between the regular rounds. By the time you hit Quest Mode and start taking your skills out of the arena and into the streets and forests, it’s pretty much an entirely different game.

Just kidding, the whole thing’s actually a completely plain and straightforward ping-pong game. There are secret characters and settings you can unlock, but they won’t hold any significance for you unless you are really into professional table tennis, which I’m going to go out on a thin, shaky limb on and say you aren’t. There’s also a rechargeable power bar that you can use to pull special shots, but they’re all steadfastly within the realm of physical possibility. No fireballs.

That’s not to say the game isn’t fun though. Like most sports games, there's an initial period where the whole thing seems pretty boring and pointless, but then suddenly you realize you’ve been sitting there playing for 30 minutes and are now completely enwrapped in its fake little world, spending an eternity of hunched-over frustration just to get the backspin right so that it bounces the ball back into the net (I won’t bother telling you how ridiculously satisfying it is when you pull it off).

What sets it apart from other games of the genre, however, is that it doesn’t offer a blanket reward to this kind of obsessive practicing. You see, all the characters have different strengths and playing styles that work out differently depending on who they’re playing against. And it’s not easy stuff to remember, like oh, the orange rock monster is impervious to blue guy's lightning bolts. It’s more like, oh, the girl with kind of shorter hair plays a really tight forward game whereas the tall, German-looking dude has a strong soft-to-hard dynamic. Plus all the players look like regular dudes in tennis garb, so unless you subscribe to Table Tennis Illustrated (it’s real; look it up) there’s no way you’re going to be able to keep them all straight. It’s a total crap shoot. You could have a PhD in one guy and still be in danger of losing to some button-mashing simpleton from Waukeegan.

Case in point, I was doing really well with this one Asian dude, and this guy from my office who I’d thoroughly trounced minutes prior switched to a red-haired girl and took me down 11 to 1 using just one type of return. Few times have I been closer to putting a controller through a TV screen. And then, after each point he let the instant replay play all the way through instead of just pressing start and getting to the next volley. Actually, I’m still pretty pissed off about that one. Cheap fucking shithead.

LEONARD WRENCH