WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007

8.3

Format Xbox 360

Developer Unknown

Publisher THQ

Genre Wrestling

Although the WWE has not ever been afraid to flirt with controversy, we reckon the legion of terrible WWE branded videogames we've been subjected to over the years have been responsible for more tears and angry parents than backstage skits such as dead-mannequin-sex could ever dream of achieving. And the reason why they've largely been poor, to wheel out a tired cliché, is that making a wrestling game is like trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

Wrestling means different things to different people: some associate it with big, hairy brawlers lobbing each other through burning tables. Others expect to see cruiserweights flipping through the air like click beetles on Lucozade.

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The casual fan, on the other hand, just wants a straight-up fight. What a palaver. At least it's not the bad old pre-2002 days, where confused environmentalists would pick up a copy of WWF Rage In The Cage in the hope of playing out a mini-game where you quell a claustrophobic panda by prodding it gently with razor-sharp bamboo shoots. The seeds of today's Smackdown series were sown from AKI Corporation's blooming efforts on the N64, again pollinated by the THQ bee, yet it's a wonder that they grew at all after the careless way their predecessors Acclaim stamped the genre into the mud. What AKI did differently from previous attempts was to create a system that understood basic ring psychology. Their revolutionary grapple system lifted the wrestling game out of the candle-lit times of button bashing and into a new, futuristic age of pace, rhythm and tactical choice. While it's largely accepted that current day torchpassers Yukes have yet to achieve the heights of AKI's parting shot, the N64's transcendent No Mercy, they've managed to refine their grappling system and produce a stream of widely-acclaimed WWE titles. What a beautiful story - except that the Xbox consoles were nowhere to be seen in the credits (aside from AKI's pseudo-followup, Def Jam - good, wasn't it?).

But this time round, the 360 is getting in on the action from the opening bell. Is this the first good wrestling game on Xbox? Without a shadow of a doubt. But how good is it? Well, that depends entirely on your entry point. So, in the spirit of Smackdown's season mode (and with apologies to Choose Your Own Adventure fans), we offer to you the world's first (and probably last) multi-choice review:

If you don't like wrestling, and are sitting there wondering how the hell it would ever appeal to you, then go to option 'One'.

If you're unfamiliar with Smackdown and want to know how it works, go to 'Two'.

If you're a veteran of the PS2 series and want to know how 2007 on next gen uses the 360's 'oomph', go to 'Three'.

ONE
If you're not into wrestling, forget about it. In a fight against a conventional beat-'em-up like Dead Or Alive, Smackdown would be lucky to bruise its opponent's fist with its face. Non-wrestling fans tend to hate Smackdown before they open the box, because to get anything out of it, you need to have a basic, fundamental understanding of how wrestling plays out. That is, the idea is to ensure that both wrestlers have a chance of winning the match for as long a period as possible, and Smackdown allows this to be without eroding the skill factor at all, by allowing you to hypothetically reverse any move with a well timed trigger press. Parrying, say, a punch is fairly easy, but blocking Shawn Michaels' sweet chin music is bastard-hard. If you're on the offence, the trick is to vary your move set enough so as to thwart your opponent's counters. Human chess at its finest - but if you don't understand wrestling's rules and conventions it'll feel like trying to get a dead pigeon to dance by playing a Relaxing Ocean Sounds Album. Unresponsive.

TWO
It's like this. There are no energy bars in Smackdown - your slugger can effectively 'go' forever. What is a concern is the little man in the HUD - this represents your pain meter and your body parts will go from yellow to orange to red as they take punishment, before healing over time. Smart players will concentrate on certain areas, as wrestlers do in real life - so if, like Ric Flair, you have a leg punishing finisher, it'll pay dividends to work on the old 'pins'. "Finishers?", you say? "Finishers", say we. Fill up your momentum bar by dominating the match and you can save your finisher for use whenever you want - but if your momentum level drops, your finisher will be as forceful as a bum-guff in a jacuzzi. Keeping your momentum rolling is complicated further by the presence of a stamina meter, which drains rapidly as you exert yourself, turning Smackdown into a sweaty game of cat and mouse. Smackdown is packed with so many game modes that they practically froth out of your 360 like an over-sudded washing machine. With 51 greased-up grapplers (and 16 further unlockable Legends), and pretty much every match type imaginable, this has more variety than the fallout from a Trebor- Bassett factory explosion. More or less anything you can see on WWE TV can be and is reproduced perfectly on your screen, and there's no shortage of ways to see them. The main path, Season mode, allows you to play through a succession of suitably OTT storylines, all of which are well-written but don't necessarily tally up with one-another. For those with the Football Manager twitch, there's also the GM mode, where you draft a roster, hire writers, line-up PPVs and try to out-draw your opponent. It's brilliant. A turn of phrase that sums up Smackdown's options in general - there's so much that it's almost impossible not to get your money's worth.

THREE
What's new? Not as much as we'd have liked, really. The only new game mode is the 'Money In The Bank' match - like a ladder match, except that with five opponents it's now almost impossible to complete a match. Environmental hotspots and in-crowd fighting are also nice additions - and flow into your matches without feeling forced. Visually, Smackdown Vs Raw on 360 isn't so much a graphical leap as it is a full-on Snuka splash - the character models, entrances and in particular the superb crowd are all giant improvements over the PlayStation 2 titles. Clipping is still an issue - but it's a lot better than before. What really sets Smackdown 2007 out as the best WWE title in years is the simplified grappling system. Previously not a series known for being particularly accessible for the short-term user, these Yukes folks have finally turned it around by mapping grapples to the right analogue stick, allowing you to reach out and achieve dozens of context-sensitive moves in a single keystroke. For the most part it's a logical and simple affair, and although it still assumes shared knowledge on the part of the player, it's a giant and significant step in the direction of mass-market accessibility.

Up to speed? Good, good. Now it's time for your next set of choices:

If you want to know what problems Smackdown has, go to 'Bad Things'

If you want to know why these problems don't really matter, go to 'Good Things'

BAD THINGS
Although good, Smackdown is inescapably flawed and at times slightly broken. Computer AI, while better than the PS2's simpletons, is mortifyingly cheap at the highest setting and disastrously dim at the lowest. The only difference between the cast, aside from their finishers, is which move set they utilise, dependent on which of the four weight classes they belong to. Even then, you control their moves in exactly the same way, seriously diminishing the replay value once you've played through once with your favourite character. This is a problem Capcom resolved with Street Fighter II at a time when Chris Masters was probably flicking ruler-propelled ink blots at his geography teacher, so the lack of variation seems little less than archaic here. Similarly, there's no incentive for Yukes to balance the characters - like real life, practically nothing that Kid Kash can throw at The Great Khali will faze him. It makes Smackdown feel cheap like market stall trainers during the first week of January. But by far Smackdown 2007's ultimate Achilles' heel, the outy belly button in the otherwise ace-filled title's chiselled physique, is the Storyline mode. It lacks freedom of choice, freedom to choose partners, freedom to start fights, freedom to do anything other than make a few arbitrary choices from time to time and obediently follow where the story arc goes. The storylines are just about on the right side of entertaining - but we expect slightly more in the year of your Lord 2006 and we're hopeful that 2008's Story mode will be less of a crossroads and more like Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction. (And we don't mean backed up with cars...)

GOOD THINGS
Despite all this, Smackdown 2007 is the quintessential example of how to design a good in-the-same-room multiplayer game. See, unlike PES, there's not really a competitive edge - winning the match comes second to having a good, competitive bout. Like real-life WWE, there's a feeling that both combatants are colluding to provide the result - but at the same time conspiring to produce an utterly engrossing spectacle of gay exuberance and heart-stopping drama. Whether it'll have the same appeal online is up in the air, but with every mode up there (aside from the Elimination Chamber and the Royal Rumble, which we're told is a priority for SvR 08), there's so much to see and do that this'll easily last you until next year's edition, even if you only do everything just once.

Once more for emphasis: this is one feature-packed game. Are you going to remember that? Do we have to put an unpleasant image into your head so you don't forget? Okay then. This is a bigger package than The Big Show's 'lunchbox'. Urgh. Now, remember that, because we don't EVER want to print it again.

REFLECTIONS
This is the best wrestling title on Xbox 360 by a particularly exhausting country mile, yet its reputation among grappling titles doesn't give it permission to start treading water. As a starting point on 360, Smackdown Vs Raw 2007 is certainly strong enough, but we're hoping that the series starts to undergo the same degree of metamorphosis during the 360's lifespan as it has in the time since the series' seminal PS2 debut, Just Bring It!

For now though, WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2007 is more than enough to be going on with. It's clearly not going to be for everyone, but this incarnation of Smackdown should be praised for refusing to bow to beat-'em-up conventions and just be another face in the crowd. This is a game made for wrestling fans by people that truly understand wrestling and its many intricacies, and no matter which aspects the fan prefers - pure, Hollywood entertainment, more exact mat-based science, stunt matches or hardcore brawling - Smackdown has the answers. And in the end, it just goes to show that when it comes to putting square pegs in round holes, there's no better place than Squared Circles.

Xbox World 360