As someone who hasn't enjoyed many sports games since Super Dodge Ball for the NES, I can still say Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis is a great game.
From Rockstar's own blurb to nearly every review on Metacritic, you get the message the game is designed to be the simplest thing that could possibly work: a distillation of the game that launched a thousand arcades into a realistic "sports" version right at home in 2006. The concept and control of the game is almost so spare that it could have been an Xbox Live Arcade title, except for the beautiful 360-era models and textures they needed physical media to deliver.
Playing is simple. Move your player with the left joystick, then use the right joystick to start your strike. The direction of the joystick is the direction of spin to put on the ball, and once you've picked it, the left joystick becomes where on your opponent's side of the table to aim. By switching up your spin selection and not getting caught off-guard by your opponent, you can build up focus. Spend your focus to save near misses with focus shots, or spend it all in a countdown in a focus mode to go to the next level of focus (red, yellow, green). There are a few other embellishments, but it's all covered in the tutorial mode.
Given Rockstar San Diego created a game so simple to learn, it's made great by being hard to master. After practicing in local multiplayer enough, I won several achievements playing through my first single player tournament against the computer. I had practiced getting into the zone where I could think about strategy instead of micromanaging the movements, and made sure to back away from the table quickly against hard hitters like Jesper. Even so, at the end of the tournament I was up against Liu Ping, and though I put up a good fight, I couldn't win. I haven't tried again quite yet, but hopefully someday soon I'll be able to beat at least the easy tournament.
My major problem playing the game is telling the difference between top and back spin. There's a whorl spinning around the ball, indicating the spin with its direction and color. The colors match the controller buttons (which you can use instead of the right joystick if you really want), making left and right spin easy to identify with the deep red and blue spinning laterally. Top and back spin, though, are shades of yellow and green that are already difficult to distinguish. Make them spin up and down and I never identify them correctly. The good news is, although the tutorial teaches you the "safest" way to return the ball is to counterspin it with the same direction it arrived with, I never noticed it be a decisive factor in game play.
The other major fault I have with Table Tennis is I remember paying $60 for it, Gamestop's regular going price for Xbox 360 games at the time. Whether I imagined that or it was a pricing mistake, it's not a problem for you: it's only $40. Some people may still think that's high for a game that's most like the $10 Live Arcade fare, but with a demo available, I expect they're moving many more copies of this great game.
