Certainly a must own in any wrestling fans collectoin, and not too bad for average gamers who may not be into wresting.
The Good: Great Multiplayer, Amazing new combat system that works well, Great graphics, Fun season, Very customized season, Great create a wrestler mode.
The Bad: No multiplayer season, Sounds effects dont give anysort of feeling or impact
Now if you asked anyone before I played these games if I liked wrestling my reply would be "F^ck that homosexual crap" but after spending some time playing the game and watching the shows a bit Its really really grown on me and I realized now how much I really like it. All of that started with this game here.
You see first of all theres the gameplay which at first(because of the very unhelpful booklet) I had no idea what to do so I punched my way through almost all my match's. Then soon I started to get a hang of the craple system and after my first try I was countering everything and was pretty able against my friends and the A.I.'s.
In Here Comes the Pain there are basically two modes of play: Season or Exhibition(sp?). Season being the main mode with exhibition being just a fun make match's and play them aka the multiplayer zone. In season you go through from each month to month trying to build your virtual self or one of the 50 or so selectable wrestlers up and win the title or titles. In season you get pulled into all sorts of storylines and always have the option to say what YOU want to even though it pretty much boils down to yes or no just in fancier ways.
Originally I had no clue how to do anything with the first thing for season. Choosing what show who and who are on and who gets to play during the season. Well after I realized this season mode became very very interesting. I would start moving people around making my show that i was on good and making all sorts of fun things. This of course leads the game to have a very good amount of value as you can constantly keep changing who's on what show and adding in new created superstars.
Now the create mode that mode is oone of the best things. There are alot of options for total customization some looking very cartoonish and others looking like they could be on WWE programing today. But my favourite thing was the ability to give the CAW(create-a-wrestler) no sex so that even females(who are not playable in season) playable. Making for some interesting and often funny storylines. HCTP also has the abilty to let persons customize there superstars moveset.
For graphics the game looks pretty good and again pretty bad. The CAW clothing for example is very ugly to look at and usually has a painted look. All the wrestler look pretty much like there real life counterparts but something about them looks kind of wierd. The croud is awful but we will have to wait until next gen for something good. Animations are well done some of them look kind of odd but thats just the connection. The connection is bad people have there arms go through each other and legs through the ring. But overall it looks pretty good
Sound is where the game fails. NO commentary is ok and same with no voice overs I dont care about that anyway. But the music, who the hell came up with this crap. Its like some one decided to not make any real music so he just screamed for an hour. Also after about 5 smackdown shows I really got annoyed by that stupid dumb song they play at the begining, RAW was ok because im a Union Underground fan. The sound effects were also pretty uncompelling they didnt make me think ouch, there was a major lack of SLAM to the sounds for big moves just kind of a thud. The entrance music was pretty good and the themes seemed to be right a little out of date but I only just started wrestling so I dont know who Scott Steiner or whatever is.
Overall its a great game that should be if not already owned by any wrestling fan. A great game with good graphics and awsome gameplay with lots of added value including several unlockables.
(P.S. This review was not spell checked please dont hate on the errors.)