 Review By: Siou Choy |
Developer: | Yuke's Media Creations |
| Publisher: | THQ | |
| Genre: | Sports | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Nunchuk, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (online play, DLC) | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Earth shattering newsflash: Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 is this year’s installment in THQ’s long running wrestling game series (no, really?). Can you tell I was desperate for an opening sentence? That bit of profundity being delivered, I’m happy to inform readers that this year’s release for the Wii may in fact be worthy of the Championship Belt. The game is well designed (which statement in and of itself marks the game as being quite a difference from the usual detritus to cross my desk), and leaves the impression that its developers actually spent more than 15 seconds of their precious time familiarizing themselves with the source material (Shock! Surprise! Is this even possible in the field of “slap a marketing tie-in on it and shuffle it out quick, some sucker’ll buy it” videogame development?)
All that aside, being the ongoing prime time soap opera it is, the particulars of the WWE Universe tend to change with rapid-fire insistency. As such, several details, character styles, entrance themes and developments have fallen hopelessly out of date before the game could even be released. There are tag team partners, kayfabe romances, and rivalries that have long since gone their separate ways and faded into memory. There are new identities, managers and wrestling moves that are neither acknowledged nor represented herein. Costumes, personality makeovers, and even the sheer number of tattoos a particular wrestler has tend to be way off target. Even some major players who have recently risen to prominence don’t even make an appearance. But this isn’t THQ’s fault – keeping up with Vince McMahon’s 3 show a week, 15 event a year sideshow can be something of a full time job in and of itself. So let’s give the guys credit for giving a fairly good snapshot of the WWE as it was, say, 7 or 8 months ago.
Almost every type of wrestling match you can think of is included in Smackdown vs. Raw 2009. Ladder Matches, Hell in a Cell, Fatal Four-Way, TLC, you name it – if it’s in recent memory, it’s probably here as an option, and better, fully accessible at startup in Exhibition Mode. What this means to you? Simply put, gamers can jump right in and wrestle to their heart’s content – no fuss, no muss. Sadly, women wrestlers (Vince’s so-called “divas”) cannot take part in all of the different types of wrestling matches, being limited to the more straightforward One-on-One matches. Managers [They still have those? - Ed.], often the most colorful part of a wrestling match, hardly get involved in the action, if seen at all. Generally speaking, despite frequent options to choose a manager, you only get to choose from a pool of fellow wrestlers – no female sidekicks or love interests, no Finlay/Hornswoggle tag team matches, and just forget the idea of someone like a Paul Bearer, Mr. Fuji, Bobby Heenan or Jimmy Hart spicing up the action at ringside. You’re more likely to wind up with someone like CM Punk standing around uselessly at ringside – a truly bizarre and frustrating development flaw. If you can’t use a manager per se, why even include the option?
Unless you’re planning on body slamming friends, “The Road to Wrestlemania” is where you’ll be spending the bulk of your time in Smackdown vs. Raw 2009. This mode is where you take the role of one particular wrestler or tag team on their way through several WWE events to the first and largest of all WWE wrestling events. And this is where THQ really shines. While altered and simplified (we’re not talking textbook accuracy here), the storylines for each wrestler or tag team are right out of the pages of Raw, Smackdown, and ECW. You know they’ve really hit the nail on the head when you start feeling like you’re watching one of the above shows rather than playing some half-assed merchandising tie in, and that’s exactly what happens here, time and time again.
Now, to be fair, some of the wrestlers chosen are a bit tired and hackneyed (are we seriously still paying attention to the Undertaker? I stopped caring when he lost Paul Bearer and stopped being a zombie or whatever the hell he was supposed to be back then…), and a few of the storylines are pretty straightforward (CM Punk’s, while I like the guy, was particularly dull). And back onto the Undertaker thing, I could do without having to play through certain wrestlers’ storylines just to unlock a few things you want – particularly when the associations are so totally illogical (why would you get Hornswoggle, albeit as an NPC, through playing as Taker?). Some of the conditions you have to fulfill to proceed and/or unlock things are pretty tough to complete, until you get a bit more used to the game. Putting someone through a table when they won’t go near the damn thing or requiring you to perform a finisher on each member of a three man tag team while the computer keeps tagging in the same two wrestlers over and over just aren’t the sort of proceedings you sell a game on. But with practice, all are doable, and we’re not exactly talking rocket science here – just a bit of patience and perserverance should get you through.
Graphics are pretty nice overall, though a bit of a bias is displayed: the bigger stars are portrayed more realistically than lesser known or less popular wrestlers (who inevitably look almost nothing like their real life counterparts).
Posted: 2009-03-27 13:00:07 PST