'Table Tennis' for the Xbox 360

Rockstar Games, following its reign as cool-gaming king with the Grand Theft Auto series and the retro-hip Warriors, decides to lower the stakes with Table Tennis. Their latest release focuses less on style and lets the simple beauty of the sport shine. The players are rendered well without dropping any jaws, and the soundtrack sidesteps the unnecessary hit parade. Instead, Ping-Pong is allowed to be the quick-witted game of finesse that it is. The controls are easy to learn (the training mode takes about 10 minutes) and difficult to master (keeping track of the ball's spin puts quite a strain on the eyes), as they should be. Rockstar chooses an underrepresented sport and produces a respectable simulation. That's cool.

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