A stagnant serie that shows its age and lack of polish on a machine able of so much more...
I'll state right away that my favorite wretling games ever are the old Acclaim WWF Attitude and Warzone PS1 games. They had more moves possible at any time with any wrestler than the current Smackdown vs Raw games. They had innovated Create-A-Wrestler with custom move lists. they had better outside the ring mechanics and you just had more fun playing the game because it wasn't a 4 move /mashing button game.
You cannot tell a story in this game, you can beat on any wrestler for 20 minutes, then they'll suddenly injure one part of your body and win.
You cannot have fun outside the ring doing cool stuff cause most of the time the hit detection will either make you pull unrealisticly far leaps or will have you splatter face first on concrete because it didn't detect the opponent you landed 3 inches next to.
The fun you get pummeling people is cancelled by how they will always get up fresh as a rose and will eventually get so far up in you at some point if you toy with them instead of playing to win, which is about the stupidest thing in a wrestling game...
The graphics are horrible. I mean i own the PS2 version and they are about the same as the PS3 in 1080p... I say "about" the same because there is a little improvement, but those are the worst graphics I have seen on the PS3... and after playing both of those for dozens of hours each i would recommend getting the PS2 version... It is that degrading on a PS3...
The only difference with the PS2 version is that some of the WWE Challenges are different. That's it. Same moves, same weapons, same guys, same crowd. If they wanted to motivate us to buy a new console they probably would have added something, I guess they saw it more as extra work and next year they'll ask for another of my contributions...
Some of the new mechanics are fun, but it still doesn't get anywhere fluid as what good wrestling games are. Anyways, for every new mechanic they add, there's a couple of new bugs every year (People still stuck on a table getting slapped on the belly to infinity as I write this know what I'm refering to).
As for the audio, it is buggy and marred with problems. The announcers will refer to WWE wrestlers not in the match sometimes, like you or your opponnent suddenly became someone else and the fan crowd will start chants for wrestlers not involved in matches, it is painfully obvious to see that they didn't do proper localisation and shipped this game mostly untested... which seems to be part of a trend with this generation of consoles games.
The way this game prevents you from booking the matches you want (no girls in Hell in a Cell, match options must be one or the other, no mixed match style, as in say, a hardcore cage match with weapons, is annoying. The way this game totally takes away the fun out of ladder matches should be studied, it is that scary...
I seriously cannot understand how this game has the hugest following of people still asking for little features year after year when they totally overlook the fact that this game is no fun... The basic brawling/hooking up system isn't doing anything better than their competition's games, but it all goes left unsaid because most people never played other wrestling games than THQ's pathetic effort. Most hurtful in this is that you know the people programming this game could do an awesome job if only THQ would turn their attention to the gameplay instead of the stupid add-a-feature/take-out-two-features dance they seem intent on keeping up until they are out of business because their customer are sick of playing the same old broken game *Now with longer loading times! Buggier Commentary! And a bunch of features you better not get used to cuz next year they are OUT!
Next year they'll fix the bugs again without attention to what is missing from the game : fun. They should go play the Acclaim WWF games and see what made wrestling games good, and how we can still play these games in 2008 for 6 hours straight thanks to their depth. As for me, well that was the last one guys, I got my PS3 now, i can play PS1 games and I'm playing WWF Warzone and Attitude.
They look bad, but at least I know it looked good back then...
Graphics =2, they look like the PS2 version, badly mangled by aliasing...
Sound = 2, crowd and commentary are buggy and sometimes stop altogether in the middle of a match. They mistake you for other wrestlers sometimes multiple times during the same bout... Sad...
Gameplay = 2, this game is broken, this game only ammounts to two strategies : cut off the opponent first using punches and brawling to keep him down or dodge the incomming flurry of punches and kicks from the opponent to counter with a grab, a clothesline, or any move that sends the opponent to the mat for a second. That's it. Every match will be an endless succession of that routine. No need to try anything else, even on easiest settings, with counters down to nothing in AI, the game still implacably keeps using that single startegy, which means all of your single player match will exactly play the same, whether you picked Taker vs Finlay in a Hell in a Cell Match or you chose Mickie James to take on another girl. Finishers are sooo easy to pull off that you don't even care for them, they are unrewarding because you litteraly end up doing your Finisher thirteen times in a five minute match, which is about as far from a realistic wrestling games as one can get. Since you only need to press L1, it feels cheap and hurried. Coming from the SFII & MK school of gaming, I'd rather learn d-pad moves to pull off finishers & even standard moves, at least you get an opportunity to strike someone who missed his move, just like in real-life wrestling. The way this game plays seems to me like it is aimed at twelve year olds. It's a shame because a good wrestling game is one way of having the most fun on a console.
Too bad they don't dare look back, they might actually realize the product went bad and would probably have to work on getting it back to gaming standards.