Pineconeattack!

Long time, no see, eh? Let’s just kick it off with some crazy animation foul-ups:

I used to play a lot of the Smackdown series, back before it added the “vs. Raw” portion to its moniker. It started out as a fast-paced arcade-style wrestling game that seemed to eschew the more sim-like aspects of Fire Pro Wrestling and even the AKI wrestling games on the N64. Instead, it was a rather beginner-friendly button-masher. As time went on, it began to calm down a little and get more grappling options and a more robust character creation option. But, around the time they really started to give the game-play a shot in the arm, I was done with wrestling in general and moved on. Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 is the first SvR game I’ve spent any time with and it’s not too bad, actually. Gone are the days when the wrestlers sold absolutely nothing; characters actually seem to react to moves, sometimes too much so.

But, the analog-based grappling system is a nice touch, since it is quite extensive and a lot of moves make use of it, such as airplane spins and various submission holds. This is old hat by now, but for me, it’s all new. The character creation system is bonkers, with lots of options to tweak how your grappler looks and almost too many moves to assign to them. Character design, off the top of your head, could take hours. This is especially so, since you get as extensive as designing your own finishers and even how their ring entrances look. The game also has a leveling system that improves your created wrestler’s stats as you continue to play the game. Did you pull of a lot of submissions in that last match and use a lot of chairs to pummel John Cena? Then your submission and hardcore stats will get a boost and you can use the points you earn to make yourself stronger. There’s also the Story Designer mode that lets you create your own scenarios involving the main roster and your created Superstars.

There are several single-player modes, like Career and Road to Wrestlemania, but I haven’t dabbled in those.  Mostly, I’ve just been playing it with a couple friends of mine on Sunday nights, doing elimination tag matches. If this were real life, Festus, William Regal and the Great Khali would be dead at this point. The game has some bad spots, like spotty collision detection on running moves and numerous other things. One of those in particular is when the bottom rope likes to clip onto a character model’s leg and follow them about a third into the ring before snapping back. Animation doesn’t need to be mentioned, as the video above takes care of that task. The ring announcers seem to get confused as to who wins matches, as well. Sorry, Shad, but you didn’t win that match. You kind of got Tiger Bomb-ed into the announce table. The roster is kind of ass, as well. I blame that on the complete lack of talent in the WWE at this point. There’s some good ones, but a whole lot of bad ones. Besides, does anyone really want to play as Randy Orton? If you do, you need to please just….die or something.

Despite those little flaws, it’s a fun game. Of course, it helps that I’m playing it with friends. It’s a good party game and when it gets cheaper (especially for those that aren’t into wrestling games, but might want to check it out), you could wait until SvR 2011 comes out so this goes down in price.  Or, you could just get SvR 2009. It’ll be missing some things, but they apparently don’t change much from year to year, so you can check it out without making a big investment. Now, if you’ll excuse me…*cues Misawa’s intro theme*

-AF