WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010 Guest Review

Written by DarkArmada Tuesday, 20 October 2009 13:16

WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010 is just around the corner and who better to review this upcoming wrestling title than our very own Pidgeo from http://pidgeo.com! Take a read and let me warn you know, even the most uptight hater of wrestling will change their tune after Pidgeo's review here. Huge thanks go to Pidgeo for submitting this guest review and I hope there'll be more just like it in games to come. Enjoy! ~DarkArmada

Thanks to my very good friends at THQ Australia I was sent a review copy of WWE SvR 2010 last Friday so I'm been very fortunate to have had a few days with it so I thought I'd share my thoughts on what's good, what's not so good, things to work on and random observations. Huge thanks to my mates at TGV for posting this for me.

Firstly a quick bit of background on my personal wrestling odyssey (awesome word) and how video gaming and wrestling go hand in hand.

I’m not a lifetime wrestling fan by any means. I only saw a very limited amount of wrestling as a kid as this was before Foxtel and the like. I enjoyed what I saw but it didn’t really hook me. With Foxtel’s arrival and the need for content, just like in the US a decade or so earlier wrestling was perfectly suited to filling some of the void and my first Foxtel in my own home experience just happened to fall in the back end of the Attitude Era/Monday Night Wars of wrestling. Talk about good timing!!

After a few months of watching Raw and Smackdown, a particular storyline grabbed me which was the build-up to No Way Out 2001 between Stone Cold and Triple H which for those who recall was superb so I ordered the PPV and got a 5-star “Three Stages of Hell” classic between Austin and Rock, a great title match between The Rock and Kurt Angle and just a great PPV all round.

This of course led to WrestleMania X-Seven, headlined by Austin-Rock II and the best build-up to a match ever! The pre-match video that wraps up the build set to Limp Bizkit’s “My Way” is one of the best sport videos ever made which you can watch here.

Except for the stupid ending to the main event, the whole thing was amazing and here I am thinking “these PPV’s are friking awesome?!?!” Unfortunately those who follow wrestling seriously will concur with me that WrestleMania X-Seven was either greatest or second greatest (the other being Great American Bash ’89) wrestling PPV ever.

Doing the basic maths on my PPV spending... Approximately 8 PPV’s per year x 9 years of watch @ 29.95 a PPV = over $2100 in average PPV’s J

In saying that, there’s enough goodness to keep me hooked ever since and I’ve done my catching up as best I can in terms of watching the greats and playing the old school wrestling games

I am a firm subscriber to the “WWF No Mercy on N64” sets the standard for all western wrestling games and while there have been some very good SvR/SD games, none have quite reach the No Mercy pantheon.

Let’s have a look at how SvR 2010 goes.

The Good

• Excellent Roster – 60-odd WWE Superstars and a handful of Legends (more on that later) with amazing depth of detail in their likeness, move set, taunts and entrances. R-Truth’s entrance of coming through the crowd and rapping his music (badly) is a great example.
  
  
• Road To WrestleMania - In a word... superb. If only the story lines on TV were this good all the time :P
  
  
• All story voiceovers – Top notch work all round
  
  
• All round presentation – The best yet in any wrestling game. This is high praise but it is as good as FIFA has become. Menus, arenas, option screens... all great.
  
  Sometimes it is the little things, like when it is a title match the graphic that comes on TV just before the beginning of the match, now appears in the game. Top marks!
  
  
• Signature into Finishers, Specific Finishers for events... – Each Superstar has two Signature Moves and two Finishers. By hitting a Signature Move your momentum bar goes to the max, allowing you to hopefully execute a finisher.
  
  For example (and this is important for later on), Triple H can either do the “AA Spinebuster” or the Knee Drive (sorry can’t remember the exact name for it and I’m at work so cut me some slack! It’s not the Harley Race running knee... the other one) as his Signature Move which then with a successful Y button will then unleash the Pedigree.
  
  My CAW used the Shooting Star Press and Vertebreaker to go into two created finishers, the Uber Driver (triple knee shot to inverted driver position, uranage back breaker then into a double arm facecrusher) and Chaos Theory (a ridiculously sick spinning flying splash of DOOM). Yes you heard it! Diving Created Finishers FTW! Just one of many things in...
  
  
• Create-A-Everything – They’ve gone all out this year let me tell you. Create-A-Wrestler is even deeper than before in its customisation. Once you have a few matches under your belt and have saved some match highlights you can then create-a-movie so your CAW can come to the ring to their own custom movie which I feel is an excellent touch. Loads of option across the board with creating
  
  One new feature is Create-A-Story which allows you to (re-)create your own story lines so if you think The Miz should make Triple H lose every week for 10 weeks then go and create it! Personally I’d rather not see that but rather see The Game Pedigree The Miz every single week through the announce table but each to their own which is the beauty of it.
  
  The Create-A features lead to another good which is...
  
  
• Sharing created content on Xbox Live!
  
  
• Global CAW advancement with user choice – No matter what mode you’re playing, if you’re using a CAW you will earn experience for your CAW AND be able to decide where it goes. You do still need to do certain things to level up specific skills but it makes it easier to create the suplexing submission machine you (well I...) wanted
  
  
• Slightly simplified but still deep control system – Just the complicated for the sake of it stuff has gone like two reversal button are now just RT timed properly
  
  
• No more screen hogging HUD!
  
  
• Superstar abilities and uniqueness – Still up to its usual standard but with the improved controls it makes doing the special stuff more accessible
  
  
• No male-on-female wrestling – Some may crap on me for this but I don’t like it, I don’t see a need for it and I sure as hell have no interest in playing it. Kudos for taking it out.
  
  
  

The Not-So-Good

• The in-match commentary – Not overly bad but with FIFA 10 setting the bar so high this just doesn’t reach those lofty heights.
  
  
• A 5ft 11in, 230lb man CANNOT do that to Big Show?!? – This is one of those weird scenarios that only come up when trying to realistically create a simulation experience for a “fake” sport! Anyone who knows what a Vertebreaker or Tombstone Piledriver is will understand that a 5ft 11in person couldn’t possibly do either move to the 7ft, 483lb Big Show but in the game you definitely can!
  
  I can only imagine how hard it would be to program and balance “who can do what move to who” so this is only a very minor negative.
  
  
• A few minor but brain hurting bugs – Now these are minor and certainly would not stop me from purchasing nor should they stop anyone else, but they have to be mentioned if comparing to the very best.
  
  1. Triple H...
  
  13 Time World Champion. The Game, The King of Kings, The Cerebral Assassin and the husband of the heir to the WWE corporate throne, Stephanie McMahon-Levesque. If there is ANY wrestler in the game you wouldn’t make a mistake in creating, it’s him.
  
  So when he hits one of his two versions of the Pedigree, my jaw almost hit the floor when Good ‘Ol JR starts going on about him just hitting the AA Spinebuster?!?! Just wow.
  
  2. Going through the excellent career mode, I was teaming up with Christian against Primo and Carlito in a Steel Cage match for the number one contendership for one of the Tag Team Titles. We have beaten the absolute snot out of them so when Primo locks Carlito in a struggle submission accidentally I have good chuckle before getting ready to give them one more finisher and escape the cage.
  
  My chuckle soon turns to abuse when Carlito taps out and they WIN THE MATCH BY SUBMISSION?!?! I thought Vince Russo was booking TNA?
  
  As I said, small bugs but ones that hurt my brain a wee bit. I’m sure a patch will sort them and any others out.
  
  
• Where art thou Legends of ye Squared Circle? – This is a personal gripe more than anything but business is business and I’m sure all concerned made a bucket of cash out of “Legends of WrestleMania” but only a handful of them are in the game and Stone Cold only if you pre-order to me is a little light.
  
  In saying that, DLC is a wonderful thing and I will happily pay for Legends on XBL!

Things I’d love to see in the next version or DLC

More a personal wish list than anything else J

• The WrestleMania arena to feel like a 70-80k seat arena instead of the standard arena with a WM skin.
• Classic arenas – Old Wembley Stadium for SummerSlam ’92, Pontiac Silverdome for WMIII/Hogan vs Andre
• Legends! Especially Ric Flair and The Four Horsemen as well as Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat
• WARGAMES! If the rumours of this finally making a PPV return come true it is a given...
• Maybe a little more in depth career and story mode, only because it’s still not quite at “No Mercy” level of depth.
• I may have missed it but from what I saw it isn’t included... the bloody awesome Turnbuckle Powerbomb finisher from “No Mercy”. A sick, sick move!

A Few Random Observations

• I noticed this in ’08 and it just gets better... Batista’s execution of his moves is unbelievably crisp! An absolute powerhouse to use.
• The Big Show is really, REALLY big! That may sound stupidly obvious at first but it is a compliment to the efforts of the developers in creating the superstars accurately
• You can spend hours in all the create modes, but my personal favourite has been my aerial finisher “Chaos Theory”
• Entrances for ring tones? Priceless!!
• Top entrances so far are HBK, Triple H, ‘Taker and DX. I haven’t yet seen Austin or Rock’s but can’t wait.

To wrap up, the SvR team have delivered their best game yet. It is deep, has an amazing level of customisation with all the create modes, offers an excellent roster and removed some of the idiosyncrasies in the gameplay from previous years.

In saying that, I’m a bit of a gaming gramps in that I’m massively guilty of “back in my day” examples of games being better, and unfortunately the SvR series has always had the long shadow of “No Mercy” over it. SvR 2010 is good... REALLY good but a few tiny little things just stop it from breaking completely out of the shadow for us “old-timers”.

However this is a completely different generation and this is by far and away the best wrestling game of the HD era. Definite recommended purchase and...

6 of 7 Thumbs Up (thank you Homer!)

Disclaimer: As most readers of TGV know I work in Microsoft IT in Sydney and used to work for Xbox locally. Since this is the case, I want to be clear that a) I only recommend this game on Xbox 360 and b) this is my personal opinion as a long time gamer and as a fan of professional wrestling and these opinions do not reflect those of my employer, the Microsoft Corporation or any of its subsidiaries.

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