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Get used to those words if you buy this. Feels like you see it every 30 seconds or so. Before a match it loads the entrances, then it loads the match itself, then it loads the cutscene afterwards showing you victor and after the match (if you don?t select rematch) it loads the menus up again. Becomes very annoying.
With that out of the way, how does it play?
I?ll put a disclaimer here, I am not a massive wrestling game fan. The extent of my knowledge rarely goes beyond the western WWF/WWE games and whilst I?ve played the likes of Giant Gram and Fire Pro, it?s certainly not to the level of dedication that those games demand.
The game is still fundamentally the same SmackDown! game it has been over the years. Modifications have refined it in ways to improve but at the same time there are still some of the same annoying foibles that Yukes never seem to get round to sorting. They have added lots of things this year which do make the matches play out like a televised WWE match and I think this is an important distinction to make between the SmackDown! games and the wrestling simulators. Yukes probably aren?t aiming to create the most realistic ?wrestling? game but instead the most accurate recreation of WWE television on a console and in the main they have achieved this but there is still much for them to do.
Perhaps the biggest change is the Stamina meter and this is a great inclusion. One of the downsides of previous games is the matches always seem too fast with wrestlers racing around the ring pulling off move after move. The stamina bars rectify this forcing you to pace your attacks and pick moments to recover otherwise you will get caught out. Running around the ring and performing big moves will deplete your stamina bar and periods of inactivity or pressing the Select button allow you to recover stamina. Your wrestler doesn?t feel the effects until the bar reaches halfway then it starts to take longer to recover from moves and your wrestler slows down. Perform a big move when the bar is fully depleted and your wrestler will collapse to his knees and start breathing heavily. Works brilliantly, especially in close matches. On many occasions there have been matches where I thought I?ve beaten my opponent but unable to go for the pin as my attacks have depleted my stamina and I desperately try to recover in time.
Face/Heel tactics again have come into play after their initial implementation in last year?s game although again with some modifications. You no longer have a separate Clean/Dirty meter to fill. Instead a 5th grapple state has been introduced (initiated by pressing Circle on it?s own without any directions) and the moves available from this grapple differ depending if you are currently Clean or Dirty. Clean allows you to perform regular moves like Neckbreakers and Suplexes whereas Dirty provides you with Eye Rakes and Low Blows. Again this is a positive change as it means that a Dirty wrestler?s moveset is modified slightly to allow them to play a Heel role in ring. In the previous game filling your Clean or Dirty Meter providing you with bonuses but as I said those meters are now gone. Again there is only one momentum meter which when filled allows you to perform your finisher or store the move for later (you can only store one finisher now as opposed to up to 5 previously). Clean wrestlers can also use the stored move to steal an opponent?s finisher whilst Dirty get access to a ?Super? move which I haven?t seen yet (presumably a Low Blow or something similar with enhanced damage).
Like I said, Yukes? aim seems to have been a recreation of WWE televised event further evidenced by some of the mini games that can occur mid fight. Initiate a Sleeper Hold and you the wrestler in the hold has to stop a metre to escape from the hold. You get 3 attempts, each one visually represented with the referee holding up the wrestlers arm and letting it drop. If it drops 3 times the referee stops the match. The 3rd time allows a greater margin of error and also provides an opportunity to reverse the move which is great if you pull it off as your wrestler starts psyching up and building the crowd in order to fight out. Another cool event happened last night when both wrestlers were low on stamina and I hit a big suplex. Both were down and the referee started a 10 count again with the players having to stop the meter in a specific point to build enough energy to get up. When these events occur it really does give a good recreation of a televised match.
When I get into the game these moments make me appreciate what Yukes have achieved but there are still annoying faults many of which date back to the series? PSone routes. High-flying moves are still poor. They feel far too floaty and lack impact. Reversals still feel far too generic. There are a few specific reversals (i.e. countering a Hurricanrana into a Power Bomb) but in most cases it?s just elbows and the like regardless of if your wrestler is a Luchadore or a Heavyweight
The game is loaded with gimmick matches but many feel half-baked and under-developed. Take Ladder Matches (or Tables, Ladders & Chairs). No Mercy 5 years ago had what I consider to be the best recreation of Ladder Matches to date simply because the game allowed you to setup the ladder and slam your opponent onto it with whatever move you desired. In Yukes? games Ladder matches allow you to swing a ladder to hit your opponent and use it to leap of (and land those crappy high-flying moves). Try and setup your finisher so you slam your opponent into the laid out ladder and it floats safely out of the way. So disappointing even after all these years. They do allow you to sit the ladder in a corner and slam your opponent into it but performing the same canned animation, as every other wrestler is much less satisfying.
And to Season Mode. This is probably one of the biggest reasons I play the WWE games. There is great appeal to me in taking my CAW through a season and the satisfaction in seeing him wear a title belt down to the ring is immense. Sadly even this has disappointed me so far because for the most part the results of your actions mean so little to how things pan out. This was most evident when I replayed the first match first to a loss then to a win. The resulting cutscene afterwards was identical as was what transpired in later matches. I thought things picked up when I got a choice of whether to help out Shelton Benjamin against Triple H and as a result became Heel and went into a program with Shelton culminating in a PPV Cage match for the Intercontinental Title. I lost and in the cutscene afterwards the GM came out and said some stupid **** then said the title was vacated. I get the impression if I had won, the title would have been taken from me anyway so what?s the point? Which is a shame as presentation wise it is really good. Voiceovers work well for the most part (although different wrestlers give varying performances, Triple H was good but Christian seemed to just be going through the motions in his recording). However in all likelihood it?s the inclusion of these voiceovers that limits season mode. Having a long season mode with varying paths would probably be a nightmare with voices but personally I?d gladly sacrifice the voiceovers to go back to the Season Mode from 2002?s Shut Your Mouth. SYM had a 2 year season mode (with 5 events per month guaranteed) and stories that panned out differently depending on your actions. In comparison, SDvR2006 is incredibly limited and lacks replayability.
So, once again we are without the definite WWE game that I imagined playing. In terms of the wrestling engine Yukes have made good strides (but still not perfect) but seem to going backwards with their Season Mode. Hopefully next year they can spend more time fixing the faults that are really evident instead of pointless additions like Fulfill Your Fantasy matches and frivolities like voiceovers.
Get used to those words if you buy this. Feels like you see it every 30 seconds or so. Before a match it loads the entrances, then it loads the match itself, then it loads the cutscene afterwards showing you victor and after the match (if you don?t select rematch) it loads the menus up again. Becomes very annoying.
With that out of the way, how does it play?
I?ll put a disclaimer here, I am not a massive wrestling game fan. The extent of my knowledge rarely goes beyond the western WWF/WWE games and whilst I?ve played the likes of Giant Gram and Fire Pro, it?s certainly not to the level of dedication that those games demand.
The game is still fundamentally the same SmackDown! game it has been over the years. Modifications have refined it in ways to improve but at the same time there are still some of the same annoying foibles that Yukes never seem to get round to sorting. They have added lots of things this year which do make the matches play out like a televised WWE match and I think this is an important distinction to make between the SmackDown! games and the wrestling simulators. Yukes probably aren?t aiming to create the most realistic ?wrestling? game but instead the most accurate recreation of WWE television on a console and in the main they have achieved this but there is still much for them to do.
Perhaps the biggest change is the Stamina meter and this is a great inclusion. One of the downsides of previous games is the matches always seem too fast with wrestlers racing around the ring pulling off move after move. The stamina bars rectify this forcing you to pace your attacks and pick moments to recover otherwise you will get caught out. Running around the ring and performing big moves will deplete your stamina bar and periods of inactivity or pressing the Select button allow you to recover stamina. Your wrestler doesn?t feel the effects until the bar reaches halfway then it starts to take longer to recover from moves and your wrestler slows down. Perform a big move when the bar is fully depleted and your wrestler will collapse to his knees and start breathing heavily. Works brilliantly, especially in close matches. On many occasions there have been matches where I thought I?ve beaten my opponent but unable to go for the pin as my attacks have depleted my stamina and I desperately try to recover in time.
Face/Heel tactics again have come into play after their initial implementation in last year?s game although again with some modifications. You no longer have a separate Clean/Dirty meter to fill. Instead a 5th grapple state has been introduced (initiated by pressing Circle on it?s own without any directions) and the moves available from this grapple differ depending if you are currently Clean or Dirty. Clean allows you to perform regular moves like Neckbreakers and Suplexes whereas Dirty provides you with Eye Rakes and Low Blows. Again this is a positive change as it means that a Dirty wrestler?s moveset is modified slightly to allow them to play a Heel role in ring. In the previous game filling your Clean or Dirty Meter providing you with bonuses but as I said those meters are now gone. Again there is only one momentum meter which when filled allows you to perform your finisher or store the move for later (you can only store one finisher now as opposed to up to 5 previously). Clean wrestlers can also use the stored move to steal an opponent?s finisher whilst Dirty get access to a ?Super? move which I haven?t seen yet (presumably a Low Blow or something similar with enhanced damage).
Like I said, Yukes? aim seems to have been a recreation of WWE televised event further evidenced by some of the mini games that can occur mid fight. Initiate a Sleeper Hold and you the wrestler in the hold has to stop a metre to escape from the hold. You get 3 attempts, each one visually represented with the referee holding up the wrestlers arm and letting it drop. If it drops 3 times the referee stops the match. The 3rd time allows a greater margin of error and also provides an opportunity to reverse the move which is great if you pull it off as your wrestler starts psyching up and building the crowd in order to fight out. Another cool event happened last night when both wrestlers were low on stamina and I hit a big suplex. Both were down and the referee started a 10 count again with the players having to stop the meter in a specific point to build enough energy to get up. When these events occur it really does give a good recreation of a televised match.
When I get into the game these moments make me appreciate what Yukes have achieved but there are still annoying faults many of which date back to the series? PSone routes. High-flying moves are still poor. They feel far too floaty and lack impact. Reversals still feel far too generic. There are a few specific reversals (i.e. countering a Hurricanrana into a Power Bomb) but in most cases it?s just elbows and the like regardless of if your wrestler is a Luchadore or a Heavyweight
The game is loaded with gimmick matches but many feel half-baked and under-developed. Take Ladder Matches (or Tables, Ladders & Chairs). No Mercy 5 years ago had what I consider to be the best recreation of Ladder Matches to date simply because the game allowed you to setup the ladder and slam your opponent onto it with whatever move you desired. In Yukes? games Ladder matches allow you to swing a ladder to hit your opponent and use it to leap of (and land those crappy high-flying moves). Try and setup your finisher so you slam your opponent into the laid out ladder and it floats safely out of the way. So disappointing even after all these years. They do allow you to sit the ladder in a corner and slam your opponent into it but performing the same canned animation, as every other wrestler is much less satisfying.
And to Season Mode. This is probably one of the biggest reasons I play the WWE games. There is great appeal to me in taking my CAW through a season and the satisfaction in seeing him wear a title belt down to the ring is immense. Sadly even this has disappointed me so far because for the most part the results of your actions mean so little to how things pan out. This was most evident when I replayed the first match first to a loss then to a win. The resulting cutscene afterwards was identical as was what transpired in later matches. I thought things picked up when I got a choice of whether to help out Shelton Benjamin against Triple H and as a result became Heel and went into a program with Shelton culminating in a PPV Cage match for the Intercontinental Title. I lost and in the cutscene afterwards the GM came out and said some stupid **** then said the title was vacated. I get the impression if I had won, the title would have been taken from me anyway so what?s the point? Which is a shame as presentation wise it is really good. Voiceovers work well for the most part (although different wrestlers give varying performances, Triple H was good but Christian seemed to just be going through the motions in his recording). However in all likelihood it?s the inclusion of these voiceovers that limits season mode. Having a long season mode with varying paths would probably be a nightmare with voices but personally I?d gladly sacrifice the voiceovers to go back to the Season Mode from 2002?s Shut Your Mouth. SYM had a 2 year season mode (with 5 events per month guaranteed) and stories that panned out differently depending on your actions. In comparison, SDvR2006 is incredibly limited and lacks replayability.
So, once again we are without the definite WWE game that I imagined playing. In terms of the wrestling engine Yukes have made good strides (but still not perfect) but seem to going backwards with their Season Mode. Hopefully next year they can spend more time fixing the faults that are really evident instead of pointless additions like Fulfill Your Fantasy matches and frivolities like voiceovers.
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