WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

"Here Comes The Pain! All The Way From Hell! And I Like It!"

Well, Hell or Heaven depending on how you look at it. Heaven because of the sheer awesomeness or Hell because of the sheer amount of stuff in the game. At it's heart, it is just another wrestling game but if you look at the outside, you will find loads of moves, including some moves that are not found in the WWE, loads of characters and an advanced Create a Wrestler mode which also features Create A Stable, Create a Animation and Create a Moveset. Smackdown: Here Comes The Pain has all these and so much more. Sure, it is a wrestling game. But it is not just a wrestling game, it is the wrestling game. And you will be hard pressed to find a better game.

This game also has several new match types including The Elimination Chamber, Bra and Panties match and a first blood match. Apart from the Bra and Panties match (Why?), the match types are awesome. The basis for the Elimination Chamber is that there are 6 wrestlers with 2 starting. Every 60 seconds, another chamber opens and another wrestler comes out. This goes on until there is only one survivor. You can fully use the Elimination Chamber, slingshotting into walls, and windows which will then break. The other 2 new match types are self explanatory. But just in case, for First Blood, you have to get the opponents head red, then do a move to cut them open. Examples are weapon shots, Sweet Chin Music, Pile drivers and so many more moves. And the object of Bra and Panties is to strip your opponent to their bra and panties. There was not really a need for Bra and Panties in my opinion. After all, it is badly animated, and it is a waste of space quite frankly as the other diva is constantly trying to rip the clothes off you and you have to defend. And it freezes if you give the diva “The People's Elbow” and she tries it as she rips off her own top.

Here are some match types that have been redone in this game.

Last Man Standing match – This game now has selling. They stay down for longer depending on the strength of the move and how much pain their body is in. But you have to really work to get them down for a 10 count now. In previous (And future) games, they stay down way to easily, but in this game, they get up before the 10 count on most times. The key to victory here is to get a body part red, then do a big move onto that certain part. For example, get the head red, and do a pedigree or two.

Hardcore match – You have a lot more areas to fight in now. You can fight backstage, in a backstage cell, the parking lot and even Times Square. They all have their own unique weapons with their own use. I will go into detail later on about them. And pin falls count anywhere in this match, on top of Times Square, in the ring or even on top of a car, you name it, you can pin on it. This is great and it has really made the hardcore match very fun in the game.

This game also features a lot more weapons than there were in previous games. There are some new additions like hubcaps, fire extinguishers, backstage boxes and many more. They also look great while hitting. You can swing the chair like a baseball bat which is so cool, and you can use the hubcap like a Frisbee. And trust me, everyone goes down when hit by the hub cap. S

There are quite a lot of authentic themes in the game. We get Rob Van Dam's awesome theme as well as Evolutions theme. But there are some notable themes, such as Kanes and The Dudleyz missing. Also, none of The Legends have music. There is also not a very good game soundtrack with there being very generic themes in. It would have been a lot better if they actually had some songs from bands, but alas, you cannot have everything you want. The original music is also back, and just as annoying as ever.

There is virtually no sound glitches. There are no random beeps or scratchy sounds during game play, and the music works quite well without any problems. This is great because they are using what they can of the Playstation 2's capabilities. And while there are no voice overs, the excellent captions in season mode make it an ok feature to miss out. After all, it would slow the game down a tad, and they have it at just the right speed as it is. There is also no commentary at all in this game. But after SYM, and playing the next game, Smackdown vs Raw, it is ok. The commentary gets repetitive, and sometimes, they say what move you done a long time after you have done it. So it is basic sounds in the game. Mat sounds, entrance music, pyro's and crowd noises. But, as the saying goes, you have to go back to basics to get advanced. Which basically means that you can improve lots of stuff in a game while sacrificing something. Commentary is not really that needed so they put in better gameplay and graphics.

The graphics in the game are awesome. The wrestlers look just like their real life counterparts with Triple H being one of the most noticeable people. There are also some great blood effects and some unique use of lighting. Just watch Triple H's entrance and tell me that it is not one of the best things you have ever seen. Also, they have some great animations with all the moves. People bounce off of cells, people's heads drive into the mat and when cut open, red flashes. Overall, I would say that the graphics are one of the main features of the game. And they could have spent more time on the game play, but they divided it equally between the game play and the graphics which is great as we can play realistically. But without good graphics, it would still be very good.

There are quite a lot of good divisions in the game. Most dominant among them is the Heavyweight division which anyone can compete in, but heavyweights have the advantage. So people like HHH, Big Show, Kane and Undertaker have the Edge (No Pun Intended) in this division. But the cruiserweights can fight here, and they can win a lot. They have the speed as I will say later, and they can dodge quite a lot of moves that are directed at them.

There is also the tag division. This features a lot of tag teams. Some include Los Guerreros (Eddie (Rest in Peace, 1967-2005) and Chavo), The Worlds Greatest Tag Team (Benjamin and Haas) and many others. As the name implies, they are best at tag team wrestling, as are all the other tag teams. These guys can challenge for the tag titles. They also have quite a lot of unique moves that can only be done with a partner. Moves such as the 3D, Double Chokeslam or even Double Powerbomb. These can be done at the turnbuckle, or while one guy grapples and the other guy presses circle and a directional button.

The Cruiserweight division. Some call these guys Lucha Libres which sums them up pretty much. Most of them are high flying and they have quite unique movesets. They cannot lift the heavier guys but their high speed stats can make up for that. They can challenge for the cruiserweight title as well as the others. It is hard to watch these guys because they are quite quick in the game. And while these guys lack strength and endurance, they can win against the big guys as they use strategy to win.

Finally, the Woman's division. This is the last game to feature the women's championship. The women in this game include Trish Stratus, Victoria, Torrie Wilson, Lita and many more. These girls can fight in Bra and Panties matches, but they cannot fight in certain matches, such as First Blood. They cannot fight in First Blood matches as the divas cannot bleed at all. This is quite bad, because the diva's bleed sometimes in real life (In the ring you perverts), and some of them have had lots of bloodbaths (Not related to Gangrel) while fighting.

This game has unlockable attires for quite a lot of people. You can get Bischoff's karate gee, Rock's various tights, Show's 2 arm singlet and some various stuff for some of the other characters. These do not really affect the game play that much, but it offers alternative clothing for the wrestlers. This is good, but it is nowhere near as good as the previous game had. You can also unlock some arenas, such as Royal Rumble and Survivor Series, and some Caw parts. And, as I will say later, you can unlock some legends from the wrestling past.

There are some notable people missing from the game. Some of them are Jamie Noble, who deserved to be in since he was the longest reigning Cruiserweight champ in recent memory when the game came out, his manager Nidia, Spike Dudley (It has Bubba and D-Von though), Jeff Hardy who was still with the WWE at the time, Bradshaw and Faarooq "The APA" who were back together when the game came out and many others. But do not worry, because of how much options create a wrestler mode gives you, you can easily create all of those guys and more. For example, if you select sample Model 1 in CAW, you get Funaki premade. You just need to give him the moves. And you can create women wrestlers, but they are obviously limited as to what they can and cannot do. And you cannot use them in season mode. And when I say you can create, I mean it. There is virtually no wrestler that you cannot create. It is hard to get it right but it is entirely possible to do.

But where there are people missing, there is a whole lot of new guys. For example, we get Goldberg, Sean O'Haire, Chavo Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, John Cena and Victoria. This also has far more wrestlers than there were in previous games, with the exception of Know your Role! This has about 55, Know Your Role had about 80 or so when everyone was unlocked. You are never stuck for choice in this game. And you can set yourself challenges, such as a diva against a heavyweight, or a 10 OVR stat guy against The Undertaker. So much possibilities that you can use here.

Ah, but the characters are not done there. This game features a shop zone mode in season where you can unlock new movesets, new arenas, new bra and panty colours, new attires, new loading screens and Legends. Yes, you heard me right, WWE Smackdown: Here Comes The Pain! Is this the first Smackdown game to feature buyable legends? Yes it is. Some of them are already unlocked such as Hillbilly Jim, Nikolai Volkoff and Rowdy Roddy Piper among others. Some locked ones are Animal and Hawk "The Legion of Doom/Road Warriors", "The Million Dollar Man" Ted Dibiase and many more. Sadly, they do not have music. But there are some good replacements. Christian's theme resembles the Road Warriors theme. Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior were going to be legends but they were pulled at the last minute for unknown reasons. But they have Creatable parts in create mode so it is quite easy to recreate them. Quite a lot of future games now feature unlockable legends, but this was the first game to have them.

The season mode in the game is far better than the predecessor, Shut your mouth, had. You are not just randomly given title shots; you have to earn them by winning matches and earning enough points to challenge. And speaking of Season, you can get EXP points in it which let you improve the wrestler you are playing as. This is a huge step up from previous games because everyone had pretty much equal chances before hand for winning but here, you can select the following 5 skills and improve on them. Strength which determines how much damage you inflict. Submission which lets you hold onto submission moves longer and offers you a better change to escape them. Technique which lets you reverse moves and strikes quicker. Endurance which determines how long you can take punishment before a certain body part changes colour. I will get to the colour change later. And finally, Speed which affects how quickly you run and climb turnbuckles. If the speed is 9.5 or over (For example, Rey Mysterio or Rob Van Dam) you will hop up onto the turnbuckle. It also makes it easier to roll around the ring with R3.

I mentioned body parts changing colour. Not physically changing colour but in this game, for the first time ever, there is limb damage. Next to the superstar's name bar, there is an icon of a person. Here is an example. It is Triple H vs. Undertaker. Triple H has been working on Undertaker a lot. Triple H then delivers the Arn Anderson spinebuster. The body part on the icon of Undertaker will then turn yellow. This makes that part slightly weaker to submissions. If it turns Orange, it gets closer to the submit side and when it turns red, it will be dangerously close to submit. You can damage all parts of the body. But be careful in Ladder matches, TLC matches, Elimination Chamber matches, cage matches or Hell in a cell matches. If you go for a diving attack and miss, you will bounce off the ground and hurt a body part. But you will get up again quite quickly which takes away some realism. You should be down for at least 2 minutes. But then again, being down for longer would make the match quite boring. You do take quite a lot of damage, perhaps to all parts.

I mentioned a submit side. This also applies to Bra and Panties matches as well. Well, what I am meaning is (Yes another new thing) there is now a submit (for submissions) and strip (For bra and panties matches) meter. It is a button bashing thing and if you bash the buttons enough, you can either strip someone of their clothes (if you are a diva in a B+P match) or make someone submit. This is a great addition because people were complaining that they were being made to submit early in the matches in previous games. This way, you get a change to control whether you submit or not. But there are some naysayers who say that it destroys their controller or they cannot bash it fast enough. I personally find it easy enough to use the submission meter. But my only problem is, why go through all this trouble to escape a submission? The next game, Smackdown vs Raw had a better meter in that you had to stop the ball in a blue field to break the hold, or if it was not in field and you hit X, you applied more pressure. But if you are great with button mashing, you should have no problem here. This is also the first game to feature this a lot. And it adds a lot of realism because you get a chance to escape from the submissions this time.

Create a wrestler mode has never been this in-depth. You get over 1000 options to choose from for making your wrestler. You can change their height and figure. You can also modify their face with slider bars to get it looking like what you want. There are loads of choosable options to start with but some you have to unlock. But, yet again, the clothes stick to the wrestler so it looks like they are painted on which really lets it down but it can be gotten around, because, after all, as it is a wrestling game, game play counts more, or at least, it does to me. And you can create lots of people, and there are premade caws, as I said. This is perhaps the best Create A Wrestler Mode in the whole series.

This game features Create a Moveset. Like I said before, it features loads of moves and moves not in the WWE but I will go more in-depth now. There is a popular indy move called The Burning Hammer. It is in the game but is called Reverse Death Valley Driver. There are also moves such as blood takers (will go in-depth in next section) submissions without submit bar, submissions with bar and 16 different moves for front grapple. You get a wide variety of Submission, Strong, Quick and Signature there. Sadly, it does not mean that you can actually create moves. We are still waiting for this feature and it will be here one day hopefully.

Finally in The Create mode, you can create animations. These include taunts, winning moves, walking styles, fighting styles and running styles. You are to pick a base for it, say The Rock's winning animation, or a DX Crotch chop, then you can modify pretty much everything about it. You can change what the body does, what the face is like and what the arms, hands, legs and feet do. This is a good feature because you can create any thing you want, and authentic stuff for created wrestlers.

I did mention blood taker moves. They have no relation to The Undertaker but some of his moves draw blood. What I mean is that if you get your opponents head red, then hit them with a attack or move to the head, such as a Piledriver or chair shot, you will make them bleed. This is essential to win First Blood matches. It can also look quite good and add so much realism. You cannot expect to be hit with a chair and come out handy dandy do you? Plus, it can actually be used to your advantage for submission moves as they are less likely to break out of them. But my main quirk with this is that when your opponent is busted open, there is an animation and it completely reverses the controls, so you cannot pin the opponent when you have the opportunity to. But apart from that, it is a great addition.

The Season Mode in this game goes on forever and each play is different. You can select what paths you take, what titles you challenge for (if you have enough points), what show you are on and you can even make a faction in season mode. The basis of the Season Mode is about being a WWE superstar. Achieving your dreams. And there is some special cutscenes in the game provided you choose the right choices. Here is a hint, while playing as Shawn Michaels, accept what Coach says about Wrestlemania and you get a special entrance. It is a lot better than previous seasons because you actually get storylines, instead of facing random people, you face people who you feud with. And the storylines are written by the team of WWE writers. This is good because it is realistic, plus, some stuff in this game actually happened in the WWE, either in the past, or in the future.

For the first time ever, you have different weight classes and they can lift one weight above them. The classes are Super Heavyweight (Big Show), Heavyweight (Brock Lesnar, A-Train etc), Light Heavyweight (Benoit, Christian etc), Cruiserweight (Rey Mysterio, Rob Van Dam etc) and Diva weight (The divas). This affects what you can do with moves. For example, if you play as Christian and try to lift Big Show with a suplex, you cannot. But Big Show will be able to lift Christian. I feel that this is quite neat as it adds more realism and you can actually challenge for the cruiserweight title if you are under 220 lbs. But the Cruiserweights can challenge for any title, except the Woman's title.

The table moves have been improved as well. As well as the standard jump onto wrestler and moves on the table, you also get some ones where you are next to the table. For example, grapple while your back is to table and Suplex someone and they will go through. Pretty much every move can break a table with this. Try a Last Ride and their neck will bounce off the table and it will break. Sadly though, there is no Double Team moves through the table. So no 3D through table or Dudley Device through it. And The Last Ride through the table looks sick. But altogether, it is the best tables match in the series.

The AI has been improved a lot. The opponent will counter a lot more than they used to and if the ref is down and they take a chair from you, they will hit you, and then throw the chair away when ref is back up. Also, if one of your body parts is injured, the opponent or opponents will work on that body part, eventually leading into a submission. This is much better than the random attacks on random parts of the body that are in previous games. Plus, there are no big moves and standing around looking stupid, they will either do another move, or they will pin you. Yet another thing that adds to the realism of the game. But in Times Square, when you are at the very top, for some reason, the opponent will follow you up, then walk off. They will also follow you if you fall which is strange given that that would never happen in real life. But hey, you can get the cars to blow up so it is all good.

There is a ton of backstage areas as well. There is a cage in the main part of the backstage but there is also a new car park, where you can electrocute the opponent and Times Square which features a lot of interaction. There is a helicopter with a dangling ladder which you can climb, then move the Helicopter and do a move onto the opponent. There is also a set ladder on one of the walls and you can climb halfway up Times Square with it. And if you press square and up, you go to the very top. You can also stop cars by putting car hubs in front of them. And on top of times square, you can do moves off of it which can also hurt you. Good ones to try are The Last Ride, The FU and the Chokeslam. They, among others or falling from the top, will blow up all the cars that are stationary.

I personally feel that this is one of the best Smackdown games ever. Smackdown: Here comes the Pain! Features all you could possibly want and so much more. It has great graphics, game play and sound. I got it for £19.99 which should be $22.99. So it is quite cheap and I recommend that you buy it because it is well worth the money. You will not regret it. There is a lot of replayability and the sheer number of wrestlers alone makes it well worth the price. And it is the defining game in the series what with all the new additions. So bottom line, buy it. AND THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE, CAUSE STONE COLD SAID SO.

Just to add in, I feel that this is the defining game for PS2 Wrestling Games. It put in so much new stuff, which was then brought forward into future games. Stuff like the Create Mode, the matches and even the seasons are now in future games but it all started with this game. But for some reason, in Smackdown vs Raw (Next game), quite a lot was taken out for it. There is not as good selling in Last Man Standing matches, the people refuse to sell even the biggest moves for more than 10 seconds, and it is difficult to play. But this is Smackdown: Here Comes The Pain! And here are my thoughts on some areas of it.

So to round it off, here are some scores. These are what I honestly think of the game, and what bits could be improved, but for the most part, this game is awesome, and the only thing that really needs improving is the sound, in that it needs commentary, but I can get on without any commentary in the game. After all, it is quite a distraction to hear the commentators. So apart from that, everything else is good and now, here are the closing thoughts and scores.

Graphics 10/10. As I said, they could have dedicated the effort to the Gameplay, but they split it equally between Gameplay and graphics which is good because you can have a good game and a good experience because of the sheer power of the graphics in the game.

Sound 7/10 It would have been a whole lot better if there were actually bands performing for this game. The mat sounds also leave a little bit to be desired as well, but apart from those minor things, the sound is quite good, and it is ignorable because you are focusing on the wrestling for the most part of the game. So really, what it lacks in sound, it makes up in other areas. And after all, who needs sound in a wrestling game? The most important part is the entrance music, and they really worked hard on getting every entrance music into this game.

Game play 10/10: This is the key feature of any wrestling game. You cannot have a shell without anything inside it goes (my saying). Sure, you can have great graphics and sound, but without actual Gameplay, the game is nothing at all. Fortunately, this has good Gameplay. There is lots of match types, the fighting is realistic and there is nothing that will leave you feeling screwed out of a match, not even Bret Hart will complain if he loses a match in this game, with the exception of Special Referee matches with a player being the referee. But then again, you can hit the referee so it is all good when you actually think about it. (It was not Shawn's fault).

Realism 9/10 (Well, the HIAC really ruined it): While there are some moves here that are not normally found in the WWE, they are pulled off in the game like they would be pulled off if they were in WWE. The wrestlers also look fantabulous, and the storylines for season mode are written by actual WWE writers, which is a first. The AI also makes it so much better. The fact that they go for pins or submissions after huge moves really adds to the realism, because in previous games, they did not do anything after a huge move, they just stood there and looked like they did not know what they were actually supposed to do.

CAW 10/10 They really worked on it this year. You have at least double the options you had in the previous game. You also have lots more create a wrestler spaces at 32, more create an animation (Unique for each) spaces at 20 and you can create about 30 stables.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/07/05, Updated 12/23/05