With WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 out on the PS3, Three Speech explains why we love a bit of grappling.
To be honest, on the telly, wrestling always seems more like cheesy panto than proper sport. But there’s no sport, or even ‘sports entertainment’ as they call it, more suited to videogaming. In fact, wrestling has a lot in common with gaming: the hyper-real cartoon violence, bad acting and comic book villainy that could have been scripted by some of the more cliché-loving game writers. It has characters that are larger-than-life, and despite the violence, no one really gets hurt.
And so to WWE’s latest, Smackdown vs Raw 2009, which from what we’ve seen may not only be the best wrestler on the PS3, but the best fighting game full stop. It’s either a realistic wrestling sim and a fun fighter, depending on how you want to play it.
Unlike most fighting games’ reliance on button-mashing to pull of implausible combos, WWE’s huge range of grapples, holds, punches and kicks and aerial attacks make for realistic but satisfying fighting. You can create a momentum with your moves, stringing together an offensive chain to keep your opponent reeling. Reversals are key, therefore, and your timing has to be spot on. And because the bouts can go on for quite a while as you wear each other down, each match-up feels like a proper scrap and all the more satisfying when you win. It’s very competitive, particularly in multiplayer, which is how fighting games should be.
But the reason Smackdown vs Raw 09 is looking like such a great game, even for non-wrestling fans, is the quality of the online play and ability to create your own fighter and fight the way you want. You can define the physical appearance of your wrestler to a massive degree in terms of facial features and build, with an extensive range of clothes, hair etc. Then, with hundreds of moves available to create your own move-set and finishing moves, you can bring your own individual style to the ring.
No other fighting game offers this much personalisation, and what this means is that online you could be constantly surprised by your opponent. If last year’s game is anything to go by, you could find yourself up against not just the WWE roster, but TNA wrestlers lovingly replicated by fans, plus superheroes, rappers, horror characters and totally unique and very funny freaks.
Fans of the series, and there are plenty on the PSN, really do take the time over their fighters, and hopefully the online capability is at least as good if not better than least year.
But for all the options and possibilities offered by Smackdown vs Raw, you should still be able to just get in and have a bash – button mash if want, play as the biggest meathead and just wade in fists flailing in your tiny pants. And all of this is why when it comes to fighting games, we love a bit of wrestling. Except maybe for the tiny pants bit.
Although I bought this title today as a Christmas present for one of my kids, and you can pick up “TNA iMPACT!” for a fraction of the launch day (12 September 2008) price now (£14.71 at Asda-Entertainment.co.uk), I’m still hoping “UFC 2009 Undisputed” is going to wipe the floor with both of them when it is released end of February/start of “Spring 2009″.
How old is Michael Shawn Hickenbottom (aka “Shawn Michaels”) now? 43. Blimey!
Not so much of a Heart Break Kid anymore!
BFN,
fp.
Comment by fanpages — Nov 11, 2008 @ 12:27 am
The WWE Smackdown wrestling games have shown TERRIBLE progression over the last 5 or 6 iterations.
THQ/Yukes have consistently ignored the major flaws in their 3d grappling engine, preferring instead to take the easy route by just updating the character models with the latest real-life wrestlers and throwing in additional half-assed gimmick match in ‘differentiate’ this years edition from the previous years.
The publishers/developers have been getting away with murder for years now. Much of the blame has to rest on the naive consumers who continually put up with such a shoddy WWE wrestling game. Further blame must rest on magazine reviewers who annually over-rate the Smackdown series, while only giving out a familiar annual weak rebuking THQ/Yukes for not revolutionising the series from the ground up.
In short, the Smackdown series is an annual colossal rip-off for so little gameplay innovation of true substance.
Comment by Joel — Nov 11, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
There’s always a new batch of kids wanting an annually updated game with the current wrestlers.
But maybe somebody is listening?…
[ http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/928/928245p1.html ]
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WWE SVR 09 Patch Planned
Don’t feel like playing Career over and over for attributes?
by Greg Miler
US, November 8, 2008 - If you ran out and picked up WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 today with dreams of creating dozens of Superstars, you might be in for a surprise. Currently, the only way to drag your created Superstars from their low-30 overall rating to something that can contend with the WWE heavyweights is to take each one of them through the game’s Career Mode and spend hours earning attribute points. Needless to say, if you’re looking to make 30 great Superstars, that’s going to take some time.
However, THQ has just announced that a downloadable patch is in the works.
“The patch will allow fans of the leading fighting videogame franchise to give all of their created Superstars full attributes after completing the new Career Mode one time through,” a statement from the company reads. “Given the overall popularity of the Create-A-Superstar feature and the fans’ ongoing demand for more flexibility, this new patch will greatly enhance the player’s ability to fully customize many created Superstars at the same time.”
The bad news? All THQ would say about the patch’s release date is that it’ll be before Jan. 31, 2009. Hope you weren’t in a hurry to create your biker gang/sewing circle.
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BFN,
fp.
Comment by fanpages — Nov 11, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
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