New Blood
Yuke’s have clearly taken an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude to the game in most areas, with not a whole lot being changed. The career mode – where the bulk of the single player lied in the first game – has been restructured for the worse. The basic format is the same. Each week there are four Raw or Smackdown! shows, followed by a pay per view. The pay per views are where the big matches are, and where feuds end and titles are won. Depending on your performance, you are awarded WWE cash (which you can use to buy things ranging from hidden characters to additional loading screens), superstar points (needed if you want to fight for the big titles) and experience points (makes you a better fighter, obviously). This is great. However, in Here Comes the Pain, you were always given an option in what to do next. You could have random encounters backstage, change shows, and ask for title shots. Now you can do absolutely none of it. You are confined to the shows themselves, where you only get to make the occasional choice as to what you do. This only serves to make you a good guy or a bad guy, and often the choices are pretty bad. Why this is now the case is a total mystery. Here Comes the Pain featured the best ever storyline mode in a wrestling game. Granted, it was far from perfect, but Smackdown! vs. Raw is a huge leap backward, and, ultimately, hurts the game severely. Hopefully this is rectified next year.
John Cena – has a PhD in Thuganomics AND Levitation.
A create a pay per view option has also been introduced. Here you can, not surprisingly, design your own pay per view card, with matches, stipulations and so on. You can also play this pay per view, which is a nice option. Here you can also create your very own, brand new, shiny title belt. You are given a nice variety of things to tweak on the belt, and you can create some fantastic looking examples. The problem here is that to actually use these belts you need a bucket load of WWE cash to buy them. Irritating, but thankfully there are more ways to obtain the cash this time around.
The most notable of these is the Challenge mode. The concept is great – the game assigns you a series of scenarios that you must beat, which range from hitting two finishes in a match, to beating the living hell out of Kane until he can’t stand. Beat these, and you unlock more scenarios and receive some nice, creamy, WWE cash. The execution is off, though. Rather than being able to go up to the Challenge menu (which is hidden in the Shopzone menu, for some unknown reason), hit X and start the challenge, you have to look at the challenges you think you can do in a match, then go load up a singles match with the correct stipulations and difficulty. While this way you can do multiple challenges at once, it is still fiddly. Despite this, it’s definitely a great inclusion to the game – hopefully it is streamlined and becomes a regular part of the Smackdown! series.
New to the game this year are a variety of short, in match mini games. These are fairly obviously aimed at making the game reflect a real WWE wrestling match with higher authenticity. They usually consist of a pre-match shoving/test of strength competition and a knife-edge chop test in the corner. They actually work quite well, too. The mechanism is similar to that of a golf game – hit the X button as the chop meter increases to gain power, and then press X again to make sure the chop is accurate. It’s hardly a massive innovation, but a fun one all the same.
The final big inclusion this year is the Dirty/Clean bar. In the majority of matches – good guys will have a clean bar and bad guys will have a dirty bar – the bar will be present, and charge up depending on a players actions. For example, if a player has a Dirty bar, complaining to the referee about not getting a three count (another nifty new feature available by hitting the L1 button after a two count pinfall attempt) will raise it. On the other hand, if a good guy did this action, it would decrease. Once the fills up and flashes, the player can perform a taunt, which will leave their character invincible for a short period of time. Definitely a nice addition that pays off the heroic/nefarious actions that are available to players in the game.
Of course, other smaller elements have been changed. Counters are now much harder to pull off, thankfully. The menus have a nice shiny coat of paint on them, and they look much better. Surprisingly, there are no new match types this year. The roster has changed, but is already somewhat out of date, with people like Paul London, Billy Kidman, Orlando Jordan and others missing. There are also actual legends available for unlocking this time around, the most notable of which being Bret Hart and Andre the Giant. They all come with authentic theme music too, which is a nice touch.
So smooth…
Smackdown! vs. Raw’s visuals hasn’t changed a whole lot from the previous game. It didn’t really need to, though, as Here Comes the Pain looked great. The animation throughout is particularly good, will all moves pulled off quite convincingly. One minor let down here are the wrestlers entrances, which seem to be a bit lethargic. The character modeling is great, with almost every character instantly recognizable. Some don’t look quite right through, Shawn Michaels being the first one that springs to mind. Also of note is the incredible crowd that inhabits each arena. Every single person in the crowd seems to move independently, and it looks amazing – if not slightly over the top at times. It makes the time of a steamrolled crowd seem ancient.
Well, that sort of looks like Shawn Michaels...
This is what it’s like when world’s collide
Thankfully, Yuke’s have included a small soundtrack. This means that the Raw/Smackdown! themes don’t begin playing over and over and over again each time you go through a menu screen, which is a godsend. The soundtrack is fairly limited though, and seems to be recycling material from the Tony Hawk series. The most notable songs are When Worlds Collide by Powerman 5000, and Anthrax’s collaboration with Public Enemy in Bring The Noise. The rest of it is fairly generic nu-metal, with nothing particularly noteworthy. It does seem to be awfully short, though.
Commentary has also made a return after last year’s vacation. It was probably better it didn’t. Both Smackdown! and Raw announce teams are fairly good, but it is implemented badly. First of all, it is ridiculously repetitive – expect to hear the same lines every match. It is also rather disjointed, with large periods of silence before Tazz jumps in with “I don’t know how you can say that Cole, you’ve never been in a wrestling ring!” It is plain silly. Sports games managed to get around this problem years ago – do it right, Yuke’s.
All characters (bar your character) in the career mode are voiced by their real life counterparts. This adds a sense of realism to it, but, again, the execution is poor. Virtually all characters use their normal talking voice – watch wrestling, and you will know this is never the case. It just doesn’t capture the right atmosphere. Even worse, it seems like it was all recorded in a small room, with a half assed echo effect layered over the top of the sample to make it sound live. Despite this, it is better than reading text, which is a plus.
You call this online?
Most WWE fans will get a lot of life out of this title. The career mode, whilst weaker than the one seen in Here Comes the Pain, lasts a number of hours. The Challenges will extend this further, as will Create A Wrestler. The multiplayer is still fantastic, and almost worth the price of admission. In addition to this, online play has been included. But, it is quite possibly the worst online mode on the PS2. You get to choose between a mammoth two matches – Bra & Panties, or a Singles match. That’s it. Yet another case of can’t be bothered, so it seems.
Another year, another pay cheque
WWE Smackdown! vs. Raw is an incredibly weak update to last year’s title. Virtually every new feature in the game hasn’t be implemented anywhere near as good as it could have been, and it damages the game as a result. Furthermore, these changes are not really sufficient enough to warrant anybody who owns Here Comes the Pain to even consider this game. And, with Here Comes the Pain available as a Platinum game, there isn’t really much reason to look here at all.
Unfortunately, WWE Smackdown! vs. Raw creates more problems than it solves. Hopefully next year’s game will see all the half-implemented features from this year receive the attention they deserve.
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