WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008
Xbox 360(Review also likely valid for PS3/PS2 versions)
Published by THQ
Developed by Yukes
And the lack of competition for THQ is definitely starting to show. Year after year, are seemingly progressively getting worse since WWE: Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain in 2003. That said, due to certain things, I end up playing these games far more than I honestly should, especially due to their abysmal quality. But this allows me to pick through the game for what it is.
On the surface, WWE Smackdown! Vs. Raw 2008 looks good. The graphics are quite excellent, the ring's texture has been much improved and the models are slightly improved. It's not a vast improvement over 2007 graphically, but it's there. Sadly, that's where the improvements end. As soon as they start moving in the ring, It all begins to look jerky and robotic, with most of the animations simply recycled from the year before. Moves are hard to connect properly at first, but this is leaving graphics for game play, which I'll enter into later.
On the audio front, it's the exact same as 2007- and that's a bad thing. I'm not going to force my musical tastes on people as I still think the licensed tracks in the game are horrible pop metal bull with maybe two songs I can tolerate on the whole. Although, thankfully, the horrible rap song MONEH IN DUH BANK SHALLAR IF YA CRANK or the 2006 abomination CRUSH....KILL...DESTROY do not return, nor does anything jump out at me to replace them, much to the glee of everyone's sanity. The voice over work, however, is horrible. Once again, the commentary recycles most all the lines from 2006's game with a few extras for the new superstars. This becomes blatantly obvious when Joey Styles, who is a new commentator for the game, is simply reading Michael Cole's lines from last year. Why? So they can recycle Tazz's commentary who was with Michael Cole the year before. The same thing happens with JBL, the other new commentator in this year's game, who is mostly redoing Tazz's lines and shows appropriate enthusiasm for such a hack writing job. The story mode voice overs are also shoddily done, most people matching JBL's enthusiasm for all of this, with a few gems and apparent ad libbing here and there. Additionally, all the sound effects are copied over from 2k7, including the annoying grunts and groans that ALL of the wrestlers share. If you're going to include it, how about some variation instead of this complete lack of effort?
Presentation wise, this game needed more work. The roster is quite frankly the weakest it's ever been, lacking many fan favorites that clearly should have been in this year such as Balls Mahoney, Kevin Thorne, Stevie Richards, Paul London, Brian Kendrick among others. Even the wrestlers in the game seriously lack polish, as Edge does not enter with the trenchcoat he has continually worn in his ring entrances since his debut in 1998, Johnny Nitro – an outdated character who has since re-dubbed himself John Morrison four entire months before the game ever hit store shelves – does not enter with his ludicrously ornate furry jacket. Both of these characters had their ring jackets in the 2007 edition of the game, making it's sudden exclusion kind of baffling.
But onto the meat of the game, and where SvR2k8 suffers the most. Right off the bat, they've changed the controls for the game yet again, as they did from 2006 to 2007. But this year they don't even offer the option for the old controls, only the option to use the D-Pad for movement instead of the left analog stick. There's a bit of sense to it, as they added free running this year and that'd be hard to do while pressing Y or Triangle to do so. But it's not enough reason to remap the entire control scheme almost, and they still could of offered the classical 2k6 controls if they would of bothered to think a little. Not everyone is madly in love with analog sticks.
This year's big advertisement is fighting styles. Every wrestler gets two of them, eight in total, to grant them new abilities and techniques to fight with. Sounds good right? Except very little of it is actually new. With the new advancements, many of the little things everyone could do such as power whips, fake whips and three hit strike combos were broken up. For most characters, you have less options than what you could do last year. Addition by subtraction is not addition in my book, and some may claim this may make the game more realistic by preventing giants from doing shooting star presses and 450s over the top rope, but I hold that as nonsense. A little ridiculousness in a video game is fine, but it also restricts realism in the event of some agile big men, such as The Undertaker with his awe-inspiring suicide dive from a man of 6'10 in height, from doing there awesome forays into flying. Never mind the scores of agile big men you'll now struggle to create, such as Mike Awesome, Bam Bam Bigelow, and Vader, all known for magnificent acts of agility for their size. It's simply THQ rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic to look like they're doing something even though they're not. On the positive side, the styles did bring in quite a few new moves for hardcore and flying styles, although they could of easily brought that in without neutering the game otherwise.
Also boasted is a brand new Struggle Submission system, which was sought to bring an end to the button mashing system of the older games. This seems all well and good until it becomes clear until you realize it's a system dependent entirely on luck and removes much of the drama of potentially reversing the hold in the Submission B system or battling to the ropes like in the Submission A. You either are in the hold or escape it immediately. Additionally, if you're particularly unlucky, the attacker may be able to gain a submission victory incredibly early in the match, allowing easy cheap wins. The worst offense of all, however, is the limited options. There are now only roughly 10 submission holds in the game, versus at least fifty in last years. They removed most of the moves, and the few non-struggle submission holds that remain in the game are now lame 'yank and release' holds which feel awkward to the game. While the intent to move away from archaic button mashing is fine, it is horribly, horribly executed here and hurts the game far more than it helps.
Speaking of moves, as a whole, it's been greatly cut down. Instead of 16 strong grapples, 4 quick grapples, and 4 ultimate control moves you received in SvR2k7, you're cut down to 8 strong grapples, 2 ultimate control moves, and 4 quick grapples. This seemed wholly unnecessary, and just seemed to dumb the game down to the point of retardation. Not that you have a lot of moves to put in those slots again, as you have even fewer choices than you did in 2k7, which in itself a step back from 2k6(The 2k6 to 2k7 transition removed 200+ moves from the game, for some unknown reason). Primarily this is because the styles, which were suppose to open new options of game play as advertised by THQ, also limit your entire move set. Expect two people with the dirty fighting style to fight very similarly, as they get to pick typically 3 or 4 from every situation out of a massive selection of say, 12. Less and less options every year hurts, and really hurts the longevity of the game as a whole.
The final insult of THQ's game play changes is the removal of a targeting system entirely, which quite frankly makes matches with more than two people border on unplayable. This wouldn't be so bad if it had a good auto-targeting system(much like the one found in Fire Pro Wrestling Returns), but the one in the game is atrocious. You'll commonly ignore the person who is striking you from behind in favor of staring at someone in front of you, dozens of feet away. It's simply not fun to play the game with more than one other person, if even that. THQ, if you make it so 4 people are sitting around a console, an event usually entertaining even with bad games, are spouting more annoyed profanity than enjoying themselves, you've really quite screwed up the hard to screw up aspect of multi-player gaming. It's an achievement you shouldn't be proud to have.
New to game modes this year is the ECW Extreme Rules match. Except it isn't really new. It's simply an expanded hardcore match(yet they kept the Hardcore match in) with more weapons(many of which already appeared in older games so they aren't really new either). It seems to be such a half-assed addition, much like last year's 'new' match type in the Money in the Bank, which was simply just a Ladder match, which has been in every Smackdown! Game since the second one. For some unexplainable reason, however, they removed the Special Guest Referee match, and have changed the Ironman match for the worse. Now you can no longer recreate hour long Ironman matches from games past, as the limit is strictly 20 minutes and somehow being pinned completely invigorates you of any damage completely, removing the 'fatigue' aspect of it all.
The Create mode this year is another mixed bag. This year the created wrestlers can look quite good for the most part, as many options were brought back. But it's really only up to 2k6 standards, and I don't give points for simply realizing ones past mistakes. I'm not going to enjoy Coca Cola more just because only New Coke was available for awhile- it's not marketing we should praise. The Create mode was tweaked again as well, for whatever reason, requiring you to add/delete entrance attires entirely instead of just enabling/disabling them to switch them on and off. It's an annoying little nuisance I don't see any logic bringing into being. Much like 2007, you still cannot use many of the designs on your wrestler without being barred from online. This is supposedly Microsoft's doing, but it's still worth mentioning. Entrance Creation is slightly tweaked for the better, although they removed many animations throughout for no reason whatsoever. Custom Soundtracks are indeed a nice addition, but they hardly save the game. Create a Move-set, as I noted, suffers from a severe lack of move choices although a few nice new moves were added. It can be considered a common theme for 2008 as a whole- add three things, remove six.
Story mode is also quite the disappointment this year. You cannot even use every person on the roster – and it excludes a lot of fan favorites who people were anticipating to get to play as in this year's game. Want to play as CM Punk? MVP? Or even the man WWE liked pushing to the moon, Bobby Lashley? No chance, for whatever reason a good deal of the roster cannot be chosen to play as in season. You can use created wrestlers still, as one positive in a sea of negative. This year, season is dubbed 24/7, and has two modes. One as a wrestler on a quest to become a legend- in which you play it the exact same way as you would the 2007 season, just longer and having to accomplish a bunch of tasks repeated times to get your “Legend Meter” up. General Manager works much the same, but in quest for General Manager of the year, with the same concept of completing tasks to slowly fill that meter. As a 'head slamming against the wall' Why, you still can only have one of EITHER playing at a time. For whatever reason, in 2007(year of the game's publishing) you have a game with only a SINGLE save slot for it's main story mode. Why?
As an aside, The “Quest to be a Legend” story mode in 2008 is just plain stupid in the fact of the story lines make no sense. On the RAW side I started in a storyline with Jeff Hardy, Shawn Michaels, and Randy Orton out for the number one contendership for the WWE title. Right off the bat at 0% legend status. Long gone is the story mode that makes you build yourself up or give you the opportunity to go for a secondary title such as the Intercontinental Championship. In it's place, are cookie cutter scenarios that don't make much sense. After winning the number one contendership, obviously, I should get an opportunity at the WWE title, correct? Nope. Doesn't happen. My title shot is forgotten completely as I'm thrust into a storyline where I feud over a movie role... and I have no option to say I don't bloody care about a movie role I want the WWE title. When the game does give you an option, it's mostly meaningless, in classic “But Thou Must!” lazy story telling. The stupidity is really something that has to be seen to be believed. It even gets out and out offensive at times, as there is a story line where your wrestler is accused of rape, regardless of if you agreed or denied to go out with the accuser. It's as if they hired Vince Russo to help write the game's storyline.
The online aspect, at least in the 360 version, is plagued with horrid netcode problems, exclusive to 2008 and it's prequel with lag and dropped games. You are still for some awful reason limited to 4 players despite the game being able to handle 6 – another sad thing since you'd think a modern game could outperform last gen with 8 or even 10 wrestlers in the ring, including online. But playing online is barely even a bonus, as it is by far one of the least pleasant experiences one could have with online gaming. If playing against any random person, prepared to be cheaped more so than any game you've ever played before, people not out to have fun with it, but to just win as quickly as possible, damn other people's enjoyment. It's cheesy, not very fun, and you're just bound to be called a faggot at a significantly higher rate than other online games I've played.
It's all in all a poor game when compared to it's predecessors. If you want an actual good wrestling game for the 360, I'm afraid you're quite frankly out of luck at the moment, as even the X-Box 1 wrestling games aren't particularly good. PS2/PS3 users have the past library to draw from, including Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, and the previous games in the series such as WWE Smackdown! Vs. Raw 2006(which is a bright spot in the otherwise lackluster SvR half of the series) or WWE Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain. All three of the previously mentioned games are all better, more polished, and more fun to play - alone or with friends, than WWE Smackdown! Vs. Raw 2008. It's a lazy annual cash in and you shouldn't take it unless you're some sort of fanatic and must have the latest game with the newest graphics. All I can hope for is that TNA's Impact, due this May, can destroy this milking monopoly on the American wrestling games industry.
Grade: 50% F
1 comment:
The artificial intelligence continues its downward spiral into utter boobdom, especially in any kind of gimmick match where weapons are prevalent.
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