WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006

THE BAD:
~ Commentary
~ Various Glitches
~ Season Mode
~ A.I
~ Stamina Meter
~ Lack of alt attires
~ Fulfil Your Fantasy
~ Sound Track

SUMMARY:
Prologue: This is undeniably the best game in the Smackdown! series, and the best wrestling game ever created. When there is a series of games, or a company which releases a new version of a game based on the same idea, especially sports games, it's all too tempting for them to turn each yearly sequel in to a yearly "update" with a few new flashy bars, and some improved graphics, but the bare bone system of the last game which you've been playing solidly for a year. Gamers soon see through repetitive game play and shoddy online modes which don't look like they've quite reached the BETA testing stage. Yukes was heading strong in late 2002, bringing out the hugely popular WWE Smackdown! Shut Your Mouth, just one year after the huge flop which was Just Bring It. By mid to late 2003, gamers where hungry for more, SYM in all it's glory had gone stale, and gamers where getting impatient, then with the October 2003 release of WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain, critics and gamers were blown off their chairs with the updated roster, new match types, new bars and revolutionary approach to practically everything. Rightly so the game was dubbed the "Best Fighting Game Ever." By 2004 the hype was surrounding a new instalment, with people's fingers still warm from Here Comes the Pain button mashing, once again people were hungry for something huge. When it leaked out that an online mode would be in the game, as well as many other features, people were amazed. The forums buzzed with excitement, upon playing the game many were left disappointed, it looked slightly different to Here Comes the Pain, but it didn't feel any different. Not only had it flopped and failed to improve on the flaws of Here Comes the Pain, it actually created new annoyances, such as a depleted roster and a disgrace of an online mode. That game left a bad taste in the mouth of people who had coughed up the money to buy it on release, and others who had gotten over excited and ended up majorly disappointed. By 2005, many had returned their copies of SD! Vs. RAW and blew off the dust from their copies of Here Comes the Pain to go back to a time in wrestling gaming where the rosters weren't an absolute disgrace, and where good matches weren't removed for no reason. Then the year of 2005 rocked along, just like any other. The regular hype began to build for a new instalment, entitled SD! Vs. RAW 2006. After a few sneak previews, gamers were once again ecstatic at what the game sites promised, new matches, a huge roster, secrets, oodles of features and basically everything but the kitchen sink. As the hype built to epic proportions of a blockbuster title, people rushed eagerly to the shops to get their hands on a copy.

Review: Now this is where it all begun. As soon as you insert the disc and begin your first match, you notice the top-notch graphics of the game, the realistic textures, the cinematic style season mode, the re-animated moves and improved rope physics. It's all here, for a five year old piece of hardware the PS2 can actually still hold it's own quite well, with some rough textures and outlines if you look close enough, but definitely an amazing feat to cram it all on to a single PS2 disc. However, this is made slightly less of a feat with the extremely long loading times experienced whilst creating matches, switching through modes etc.

However, once you begin to poke around various menus you'll find that the superb graphics aren't the only thing the managed to squeeze on to the disc. I'm talking about an all new General Manger mode, which is the first of a PS2 based take on the popular TEW and EWR text based simulation games for PC. While it would be nice to actually be able to see the promos play out, or have varying AI levels for the opposing brand, nonetheless it's a great addition to the game which will add much replay value when you get all that you can out of season mode.

You'll also notice that everything has been simplified, so there is now a central HUB where you can view challenges, access WWE Shopzone, check your stats, edit CAW attributes and view your trophies. It's all been neatly arranged in to a nice looking 3D Locker Room which makes you feel like you're actually the superstar. Not only that, but you can customise you locker room, to have posters on the walls, different couches, sound systems, hell, you can even mess around with the light fittings. It's an amazing amount of customisation as seen here and in many other places which makes this game what it is.

I'm into music on a fairly large scale, and have an iPod chock full on great songs, and have quite a diverse musical knowledge and appreciation of music, but to me the sound track in the game is horrid. The cool rock songs from last year have been removed and replaced with strange and annoying songs which don't really appeal to my tastes, or many others from what I've heard. Personally, I was hoping for a sort of Tony Hawk Pro Skater type sound track, full of great rock hits which suit the game genre perfectly, but this time round, with the exclusion of a few songs, the in-game sound track feels small and strange. I'm now beginning to wish the one and only saving grace of Xbox wrestling games was possible on the PS2, which is the ability to upload your own music onto the Hard Drive and use them for in-game listening and entrances. However, this just isn't a reality right now, so for me I'll un-plug the white sound cord from my TV, and put on my iPod and listen to some quality songs as I play my matches.

Challenges, a new addition to the series last year which proved little threat to veteran gamers who knocked them over in half a day and were left with a look on their face saying "Is that it?" Not only that, but the rewards were abysmal, a secondary attire for beating 60 challenges? Yeah, sounds like it's worth the effort, hardly. I rented SD! Vs. RAW for one week, and in that time I was able to beat all the challenges, go through season mode as several characters, create a few CAWs and explore almost every option in the game, and become extremely sick and fed up of the game. After it was all said and done, I regretted wasting the $3.50 I spent on renting it. Luckily, this time round Yukes has sharpened their act and increased the difficulty level of the challenges, and made them more meaning full, instead of some of the rubbish challenges seen in the last game like "Win a match without using the X button."

Close followers of the series will be happy to see several new small mini-game type additions, such as new features which allow you to "Play Possum," pretending you are hurt, then performing a sneaky roll-up pin, catching your opponent off guard and snaring an upset, a la the late Eddie Guerrero. This along with a new sleeper hold and double-KO system just to mention a few helps to re-create the drama seen in WWE programming and make your matches more realistic.

The idea of performing moves to fill up a bar, and once you have filled the bar, earning an icon and being able to use that icon to perform your finishing moves is as age old as the series itself. Yukes tried to implement a new Clean / Dirty bar last year, which failed miserably mind you, so this year they've gone back to the drawing board to figure out a new system which would be fairer, and reward superstars for varying their moves and having the momentum in a match. Thus a new momentum bar, which fills as you perform successive moves, but drains as you take a beating comes in to play. Once you have the match going your way, your momentum bar will become full. At this stage you can either store your finisher for later, or try and hit it right then and there to keep up the momentum and inflict much more damage. Making one wrong move can be costly, because if you go for it right then and there at full momentum, they could reverse it, dropping your momentum, and increasing theirs, giving them the upper hand in the match.

A stamina bar has also been tossed in to the mix for good measure, there's no question it ads to the realism of the match, but this are numerous questions of how and why it drains. You see, if you beat down your opponent for several minutes, a message will pop up telling you that you are low on stamina, which seems ironic since you're the one who has been dominating the match, and your opponent's bar is nearly full. As you stand their goofily holding down Select to fill your bar back up in an arcady style manner, your opponent nails you with a high impact move and begins to dominate the match. Now wouldn't it seem fair that they lose more stamina, because they're being beaten down? And how would running around for 7 seconds early in the match drain your stamina more than 7 continuos minutes of high impact moves? The stamina bar can be tweaked or turned off in the options menu, but ultimately the whole thing needs to be re-thought a bit more for next year.

The roster has been much updated this year, with new folk such as Heidenreich, Muhammad Hassan, Davari, Paul London and a few others making their Smackdown! game debuts. Even though the roster is solid, the lacking of Victoria, Rosey and Matt Hardy leave some questions, as well as why Michelle McCool and Joy Gionvanne made it in to the game as well as several fired wrestlers such as Charlie Haas and Spike Dudley. However, over all it's still pretty solid, and with the improved Create -A-Superstar mode, you can easily make anyone who is missing from the game.

The line-up of legends is probably the best yet to be featured in a Smackdown! game, with the inclusion of people like Bret Hart, The Rock, Mankind, Steve Austin, The British Bulldog, Jimmy Hart and Hulk Hogan to name a few. However, many people are baffled as to why there are 3 nearly identical version of Hulk Hogan. They obviously cover his three personas, being Hogan during the 80s, Hogan in the nWo and Hogan as he is in present day. However, many failed to see the need to create three individual characters, instead of just having them as alternate attires, and when you select 80s Hogan for example, you have the character model of him during the 80s, entrance of him during the 80s and move set of him during the 80s. But for a guy who has been using the same finisher, wearing the same outfit and looking the same for nearly 30 years, it's hard to understand why they needed three of him in the game, and why they couldn't of had him when he was at his peak as 80s Hogan, and then replaced the other Hogi (plural of Hogan) with the Legion of Doom, or Roddy Piper and Bob Orton. Then why Hogan? Why not have Mick Foley and Dude Love in the game as seperate characters, or The Rock and Rocky Mavia.

Alternate attires seem to be getting worse as time progresses, maybe Yukes are under the impression that we don't care much for every one in the game having a secondary, or ever a third attire, such as in Here Comes the Pain, so they gave us one alternate attire for five people, which really just doesn't quite cut the cheese, especially if you were hoping for everyone in the game to have a second attire. The only redeeming feature in all this is that Kane has his old school mask and clothes from his debut in 1997, which many prefer to his current attire. Fortunately, unlike last year they didn't need to add it in as a separate character.

Season mode has it's ups and downs. While the cinematic style season mode with long cut-scenes and superstar voice overs make it a pretty cool experience the first couple of time through, after that it's boring as hell, and after getting the same legend tour storyline over and over, you'll end up just skipping the cut-scenes anyway. There are quite a few storylines, 12 to be exact, what the lack in quantity, they certainly make up in quality, with the actual angles being quite good and well thought out, probably the best storylines we've seen so far. However, after playing through season mode numerous times, you'll be begging for a Here Comes the Pain or Shut Your Mouth style season mode, with actual options, allowing for different paths and such each time you play. The individual story lines which have been promised two years running are still no where in sight, but hopefully on the horizon for the next Smackdown! game.

This game undeniably has a huge amount of replayability. You'll have plenty of things to unlock, trophies to win and ways to customise and create to your heart's content. In and almost San Andreas style, there seems to be endless things to do, you'll obviously be able to get through them all if you put enough time in, but even the create features alone add more replayability than any wrestling game which preceded it.

Now here comes the one you've been waiting for. Online mode. Featuring in last year's SD! Vs. RAW, in it's simplest and leggiest form. If you never played online last year, let me break it down for you. You went online, set up a match, either singles or bra and panties, had the match - which was filled with lag and button delay mind you, then at the end you would return to the lobby with absolutely nothing. No W/L/D record and no title. Now Yukes have looked back at the horror of last year and once again gone back to the drawing board. They've now made it so you can have any match type, excluding Royal Rumbles and Elimination Chambers, have four people in a match at a time, have tag matches, have matches for created titles, with the winner having their title saved to their memory card, keep a W/L/D record, look at a leader board and even trade CAWs with other people. There's also a lobby where you can talk to others, and set up matches. Navigation has been brought to a simplistic level. Now where in other games such as KillZone where online was the saving grace which stopped the game from being classed as "rubbish," the online mode in this game just makes a great game even better. There will be some lag experienced when playing people with slower connection, or in matches with four people, or excess polygons, such as a cage match, but over all it's much less than last year. Unfortunateky, there is absolutely zero USB peripheral (Headphones or Keyboards) support during matches either, so this means you cannot taunt your opponent in singles matches, and you cannot communicate with your partner in tag matches.

The Artificial Intelligence in this game is abysmal, for numerous reasons. Not only does it act like a Xbox wrestling game developer made it, but at times it can just become plain ridiculous. When I leave the ring, I'd expect my opponent to follow me out, if not every time, at least occasionally. However, on the lower AI levels, every single time I leave the ring, the COM will stand their looking dumb founded, then after about 8 seconds, will begin to taunt. Not only this, but at higher AI levels, the COM will reverse nearly everything, until it gets to a ridiculous point where no moves are being performed, and all that's happening is reversal after reversal after reversal, until someone lands a punch, then they try for another, and get reversed. While it makes things more challenging, it soon kills the fun. Not to mention opponents with their entire bodies red reversing your full-momentum finishers just after you've tossed them off a 20 foot high steel structure. Reversals reach an extreme level in online matches, but at least you can verse a real human, who won't randomly charge at you when you climb the top rope, or perform other acts of idiocy.

Commentary was something which was disgraceful in Shut Your Mouth, non-existent in Here Comes the Pain, pathetic in SD! Vs. RAW and equally as bad this year round. The voice recordings are fine, as well as the character models viewable at ringside where ever there is a Spanish announce table, but it's the repetitiveness and glitches which kill it. Just say Taz is talking about how Cole never wrestled saying something like "I don't know where you're getting this stuff from, because it's certainly not from.." then in mid-sentence he will cut himself off and say "Man, what a reversal!" Obviously some shoddy move orientated programming and a big slip up here. Not only that, but because the commentators are programmed to begin their comments as soon as something like a reversal button is pressed, you'll hear Taz say his token "Man, What a reversal!" the you'll see your opponent lift you up for a sidewalk slam, then you'll watch as you counter it into a Russian Leg Sweep, 5-7 seconds after Taz commentated on how fantastic a reversal it was, this often kills the spontaneity of performing a reversal. Not only that, but they will often comment on how both "men" in this match are putting on one hell of a show, when it's Trish vs. Stacy. Other slip-ups such as J.R and The Burger King saying how good the match is because it's RAW, when both people wrestling in the match are from Smackdown!

Then there was the genius who thought guys would get a rush from watching polygons wrestle each other in French Maid or Nurse outfits, spank each other and knock each other over the head with pillows. I was hoping I wouldn't have to play this bonified version of a Bra and Panties match, but then I saw it listed in challenge mode and hoped it may not be too bad. I was soon proved wrong as I realised the AI was programmed to pick up a pillow at every chance, so when I was trying to whip a diva onto the bed and spank her three times to beat the challenge, I would lock up to initiate the irish whip, but be reversed, the AI would then pick up a pillow, I would block her attack, and drop her pillow, by the time I had done this she had a fresh pillow in her hand and was swinging away at me. I ripped it from her hands, then went for another irish whip, however there was a pillow blocking her path so she stopped. I knocked her over and began to move the pillows out of the way, by the time I was finished she had gotten back up and had a new pillow in her hands, and was once again swinging it at me. I toe kicked her, tossed the pillow out of the way and finally managed to irish whip her on to the bed where I engaged in a strange spanking mini-game. With confusing instructions I was left there bewilded until I received a message telling me I had missed. After a repeat of what had happened before with the pillows I finally managed to engage once more in the spanking mini-game. I hit two successive spanks out of no where, not quite sure myself how I got them, but missed the third. The challenge clearly stated I needed three in a row, so I had now wasted 10 minutes of my life and achieved nothing. Before I could decide whether to quit and try again later, my opponent began to rip my pants off, and I was forced to button mash to move a pink love heart towards 'escape,' so I wouldn't have my French Maid dress ripped off. I then tried several more times with the spanking meter, still to no avail. I then beat my opponent down with a pillow until she could take no more, and I was told I had 'Fulfilled My Fantasy.' The accuracy of this was questionable, but at least I had beaten half of the challenges involving this match.

Although I definitely spent my time splitting a few hairs about this game, over all it's definitely worth buying for any wrestling fan who owns a PS2. Even purely for a single player it's well worth it's money, and for someone who plays with their mates, or has a PS2 Online set-up, it's more than worth the replayability you'll get out of it.

For the possibly last wrestling game ever on the PS2 console, it's good to see that it made an impact in the gaming world, and there's no doubt that the PS3 sequel will be huge, with the extra disc space and improved graphical power, I'm sure the series will be able to meet many past demands which were shot down due to the large amount of disc space they would take up, but this year round it's good to have something to keep our wrestling game appetites satisfied until a new game is unleashed on us.

'Nuff said.