TopSpin 2K25 Review (PS5)
It’s been 13 years since PlayStation fans last got their hands on a digital racquet in the TopSpin series. In that time, we’ve jumped two console generations, and the industry has seen a massive shift towards the live service model. Put together, what does that mean for the series’ return in TopSpin 2K25? Good things, apparently, as Hangar 13 has cooked up a fun, flashy, and addictive tennis title that you’ll enjoy coming to grips with and love mastering.
TopSpin 2K25 is the confident reintroduction of this long-dormant franchise, and one we’re happy to see stand alongside the likes of the NBA and PGA series. If you’ve played a 2K Sports entry before, then you’ll know roughly what you’re getting into regarding single-player and online content — but thankfully TopSpin stands apart from the crowd with a tantalising learning curve.
Truth be told, we’re not very good at TopSpin 2K25, or at least that was the case when we first booted it up. Swaggering into a match with our Pure Xbox colleagues, we assumed that having played the preview would be enough to volley us to victory. Yet after a staggering defeat — six sets to nil — we enrolled in TopSpin Academy, the game’s training mode voiced by none other than tennis legend John McEnroe.
We struggle to think of a game with tutorials that feel quite as mandatory as the ones in TopSpin 2K25, and we don’t mean that as a critique. We’re sure if you’ve familiarised yourself with the courts of Top Spin 4, you’ll have a much easier time adjusting. However, if you’re a newbie to the series, you’re gonna need those lessons. We even found ourselves paying acute attention despite McEnroe’s dull delivery.
Having graduated from TopSpin Academy, we fling ourselves out into the courts with our colourfully created MyPlayer character. It’s here that you’ll come to grips with the game’s timing system, which rates your volleys as ‘too soon’, ‘good’, ‘perfect’, and ‘too late’. Put together with the need for strategy, positioning, and volley types, our opening hours are like a Rocky training montage — facing defeat time and time again, but persevering nonetheless.
This is when the magic of TopSpin 2K25 really starts to kick in. It’s an incredibly fun game to learn, and all the more satisfying when you finally start to establish your very own playstyle. Once previously unbeatable tennis stars become equal rivals, the game shines, and thanks to the DualSense haptics, slamming home a perfectly timed volley never gets old.
