Top Spin 3 sits firmly in this territory and it has a purity of focus that’s very reassuring. Top Spin is about as serious as you’d want a tennis game to be, with an extensive create-a-player system, play mechanics that reward forethought,  a good eye for tennis, and what promises to be a vibrant online feature-set.

The character creation system allows you to work from templates or completely customise your character, from build and facial features to tattoos, outfits and playing styles. It’s an easy-to-use system and the detailed character models stand up to close scrutiny very well indeed. They also animate smoothly in play – they’re a little doll-like but their movements look natural, clothing and hair are procedurally animated (so they bounce and flutter more or less like the real thing) and the real-world players (a roster of current top players plus a few legends) are all easily recognisable.

Building up your character is also great fun. Stats are improved by playing matches, so once you’ve made a character and been to Top Spin School (training mode), you can get busy with the Career mode. The difficulty curve is well-judged so you should find yourself advancing at a steady rate, from amateur to pro to champion, with your in-game stats improving side-by-side with your real-world skills. Or if you’re impatient, you can skip character creation and just launch yourself into Tournament Mode, where you’ll play in a real-world tournament against a roster of real-world and in-game opponents.