Ah table tennis. It was one of the sports that I tried out as a teenager (aside from badminton, soccer, rounders, squash, etc) before finding my favourite as an adult: long distance running. In any case, table tennis is one heck of a sport with fast paced action. Skyworks Interactive’s World Cup Table Tennis attempts to bring about this experience on the iPhone.


Having spent some time playing the game, I applaud their efforts as I had a blast playing the game. The game pits players against a disembodied pad controlled by an AI (across a couple of different game modes) or a human player in a head to head mode. The controls are pretty realistic; I control my own disembodied pad by moving my finger around the touch screen and can come up with spins, drops and smashes.

The Career Mode unlocks different countries to play against as players progress, and some of these A.I players are no pushovers. The Tournament Mode on the other hand allows players to represent one of the unlocked countries, in what else but a tournament. Choosing which country you play for doesn’t seem to have an effect on the gameplay though.

The Arcade Mode will have players playing not against an A.I opponent, but the other half of the board folded up, and they’ll be challenged to hit the ball on certain areas of the board marked by coloured rings.There are a couple of minor glitches though that prevents World Cup Table Tennis from being the perfect virtual incarnation of table tennis on a mobile device. First up, the ball is a little “floaty”, and sometimes it changes direction after passing the net to the opponent’s side of the board, which is pretty weird.

Achievement and leaderboards are provided by who else but Apple’s Game Center. With iOS 5 Game Center enhancements I would think that most developers will eventually drop OpenFeint for Apple’s offering. Despite the minor glitches, World Cup Table Tennis sets the bar really high for other games to aspire to and as such Nine Over Ten 9/10 awards World Cup Table Tennis with a 4 out of 5, check it out!

The game is available on the iTunes App Store for just USD 0.99: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id310303959?mt=8. A review code was provided to Nine Over Ten 9/10 for the purpose of this review. P/S: The iPad version is out and unlike the iPhone version, it’s on the freemium model, check it out: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/world-cup-table-tennis-hd/id433657332?mt=8