WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw

"Another year, another sequel...MEH!"

Smackdown vs. Raw is a good game. Notice I said good and not great, that should set the tone for this review right here and now. (im giving it only a 6 out of 10). And its not that it's a bad game but the little things that irk me about it add up and it really drives me nuts.

The roster has always been an area of concern for fans of this series and this time its no different. Sure the big names are included and that's important, but every game needs a good supporting cast, right?. Kiss goodbye the thoughts you had of being any of your favorite cruiserweights unless it's Rey Mysterio or Tajiri, cause everyone else didn't make the cut. In fact I have yet to encounter the CW or tag team belts in the game at all, making me question what the hell THQ was thinking. Since i'm almost positive they force you to create them and leave them out of story mode. It brings the whole “if it aint broke don't fix it” mentality to mind. The legends are in my opinion just a waste of roster slots. Sure the concept has its novelty but if I wanted to be brutus the barber beefcake or jimmy snuka, I would either buy “Legends of Wrestling” or create them. Do we Really need both versions of the undertaker(deadman and biker boy) and kane(masked and unmasked)? And I will always cut the game developers slack for having certain wrestlers in that aren't too popular or left the company. But when this game was being made A-Train was nowhere near tv (maybe velocity or heat, MAYBE). Whose to say they couldnt make more people for the roster and then either make cuts just before final print or just please more people by having a more comprehensive roster? (And am I just not far enough into the game or did Eugene not make it in?)

Also gone is the ability to play gm before the season and tweak who is a face or heel, and who is on which show. This feature was HUGE for me in importance, because o got the chance to take out the wrestlers who got fired or sucked (IMO) and then allowed me to inject my twenty created stars to make the story mode the best I thought I could possibly be.

The submission meter idea I think worked well, it really ads some functionality to the moves now. At least you can hold the move now and have the ability to reverse them more and escape more aptly. But the in the corner chest chop meter?, that feature is so worthless, it just seems so dated. And the new royal rumble meter...not bug-free by any means. Instead of just complain about the RR meter let me pose this question to you. How would you feel if you sat through the entire RR match for 30mins and then came out and just got lifted up over someone's head and tossed out like that, you lose?, or how would you feel if you battled through umpteen other superstars to suffer much the same fate?, pretty pissed off im sure. Its just ludicrous the way they try to make this seem like such an improvement over the previous effort and then there is such a cheap way for the computer A.I. to just dump you. So it really makes me feel like they took a step backwards (think older SD games where you had to waste time and watch the matches before yours in story mode)in making you sit through the entire match in season mode to be screwed over harder than Bret Hart and get tossed in five seconds. Oh wait I failed to mention that you can also get simply punched by a top star and fly off the apron. The function to this RR meter is that you irish whip an opponent over the ropes and grapple with them to get them out by hitting buttons over and over to empty the meter. But the computer seemingly just skates past this match dynamic. What I wanted to add last about this is that it now makes the match a button masher, very unsatisfying and it sucks the fun out of the overall match when you start to callous over.

The voice-overs are good and I like that, it actually broadens the season mode experience a bit to hear the voices like on tv. The down side to this is that they took up a lot of room on the disc's memory to have these and I think that is part of why the roster is so small. And on top that many of the voice overs sound forced, possibly phoned in or just plain poorly scripted. But in THQ's defense I think the get an A for effort in adding this. Season mode seems a little shorter which can be a plus, and most of the stories seem a little fresh. But right away again another problem, and it's the content of the season mode. Maybe this is just on SD side (the show not the overall game itself), but the whole first chunk revolves around interaction with the Divas in very sexually suggestive cut scenes and dialogues. How did they only maintain a Teen Rating for this game when so much promiscuous sex is implied between your character and the divas? I bet in the first four hours of my season three of them involved stupid sex themed diva stories. Maybe you like this but not me, I watch wrestling for athleticism not T and A. If I wanted a femfest I'd have boughten Rumble Roses.

They improved the soundtrack quite a bit, but it does get just as repetitive as it always has. I love that they brought a diverse music selection to the table, hip-hop and hard rock. Artists included are (Powerman 5000, core, Tantric, breaking benjamin and public enemy w/anthrax). I would like to applaud the developers for actually shelling out the dough to license the rights to use they tunes. Unfortunately on the flip side they have yet to get all the superstars music down to respectable versions of the actual sound.

Before I forget to mention, yes it is online now. This is incredible for the connected masses, but for me who doesn't play online, no big whoop.

At some point it had to happen, a series has its pinnacle and then sets into a downtrend. Not the case this time, but I would say they dropped the ball in various areas this year. There really isn't enough different about this years version than the first one to warrant buying it at full price so take my advice and purchase this used on ebay or somewhere you can get a deal. Before the ostriches out there give me the usual “I only speak positively about everything because I have no opinion of my own and like everything!” type responses and say “if you don't like it don't play it!”, realize that while you have this board to praise, others also have the ability and deserved right to complain. I do like the game but overall the more I play the more I find to disagree with. Which is really upsetting for me, I love this series a lot. So heed my warning here, rent this game before you buy because just because they made another, newer version doesn't necessarily make it better (a la the Madden series).

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/18/05