This incomplete sloppy game doesn't give you much motivation to keep playing.
Let's start with the very short list of what's good about this game. The moves you do in the ring look very fluid and true to TV. Due to the fact that the actual TNA wrestlers were motion captured. The character models themselves look pretty decent. And I like the fact that every single wrestler looks like they should physically.. compared to where Smackdown games have nearly every character (no matter what they look like in real life) with six pack abs.
And the bad.. omg.. where to start? For one, yeah, the character models look pretty good BUT all the wrestlers are the same height! Making matches like Abyss vs. AJ Styles look ridiculous.
The controls seem a little weird over complicated.. holding down L1 while pressing down triangle with a direction will give you a strong grapple, etc. Circle is the universal action button that does everything, causing you to get out of the ring or climb the turnbuckle when you really want to pin the guy.
The gameplay itself is horrid. Hit detection problems and random glitches. The reversal system is almost hilarious sometimes. When reversing at dropkick it ends up going into an animation of reversing a powerbomb. The game evidently wants me to break my controller wiggling the left analog stick when trying to kick out of a pin.
Out of the box, over half the game is unlockables! You even have to unlock moves for your CAW. Leaving you with not many wrestlers to choose from and a default moveset. To unlock everything you have to go through the incredibly tedious story mode, which is full of awful voice acting and a incredibly simple looking create-a-wrestler system.
All the wrestlers have pretty much the same moveset. The only thing differentiating them is their finishing moves. The rest of the moves are all generic and lacking in any signiture moves. Making you not get the feeling of actually playing as your favorite TNA wrestler. If you played as one character you played as them all.
All in all, I think this has been a step backwards in wrestling games. There is little to keep me motivated to play this game and I'm glad I just rented it. NOT FUN AT ALL. They are already working on the sequel to this, but after this debacle of a game, I'm not giving it a second chance. Waiting for this game, I had the hope that this would be a good arcade style wrestling game opposed to Smackdown's slow simulation style. But looks like I might have to wait much longer. Even if you are a huge wrestling fan like myself.. do not even rent this game. Trust me, you'll be glad you didn't.