WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth

"Know your role and SHUT THAT MOUTh"

This game is awesome. When it came out, people were astounded. FINALLY, a proper wrestling game for a games console. With past failures such as Smackdown: Just Bring It, and Wrestlemania X8, people were rapidly giving up hope on a good wrestling game for any console. Then Smackdown Shut Your Mouth came along. And the wrestling God Vince McMahon said: Let all the fans go out and buy this, for they will be eternally happy after playing it.

While it is still a wrestling game, it is quite advanced. Authentic entrances that have real pyro timings. They might not have all the proper themes but that is not for lack of trying, it is more for copyright reasons. There are also themes and call names for people who are not in this game and they have authentic entrance videos for the ingame superstars.

The create a wrestler mode is also quite advanced. You get more options than ever before. You can also create over 25 wrestlers. You get at least 4 times more options for each tiny bit of the caw than you did in Smackdown Just Bring It. I mentioned authentic call names. Well, some people, such as Deacon Batista and CHavo Guerrero, for example, were left out of this game. Well, in a nice unique touch, they have call names for quite a lot of superstars not in the game so if you get a good caw for them, you can create them so as they come out to their call names.

That being said, there is quite a lot of WWE Superstars in the game. Then there is Al Snow. About 53 superstars and Al Snow. OK, I am sounding like Mick Foley now. But Al Snow and the Snowplow is in the game. But Head is not. AL Snow always has Head (The Mannequin) with him in his entrance so why is it not in this game?

MAinstay superstars such as Undertaker, Kane and Jericho are in this game. There are also some new superstars such as Tough Enough winner Maven, Mark Henry and Randy Orton.

There is not really any new modes in this game but you get a lot more places to go backstage.

There is also a much improved Season Mode in this game. You get to play 2 years as any superstar, getting title shots, attacking and interfering and purchasing stuff from the Shopzone stand backstage.

Shopzone? Yes, you can buy alternate attires and Caw stuff here. To buy them, just win a match at any PPV and you get a choice of the PPV specific item to buy.

There are advanced grapples and selling in this game. Selling, for all you non wrestling fans, means how you act hurt. I call your attention to Smackdown: Just Bring It and the games before it. You would hit a big move and your opponent would just get back up. Not in this game, they stay down for a while in this game. We also see the start of limb damage, but I do not know if it affects anything. Work on an arm or a leg long enough and the opponent will either start limping, or clutch their arm in pain. And quite a lot of moves have been re-animated and added. New Pedigree's, 10 Stone Cold Stunners, 3 tombstone piledrivers and lots of Indy moves that you will never find in a WWE ring.

The stables have taken a hit in this game. And maximum ringside people. Before, it was 5 people for stable and 8 at ringside but now, it is max of 3 stable people and max of 6 people at ringside. But this is acceptable giving all the new stuff that has been added to this game.

This game also features weapon hits. They looked really really bad in the last games but now, chairs can bounce off faces, you can choke people with sledgehammers, you can do moves onto ladders and tables look good breaking. There are also other weapons such as Dustbin lids, Dustbin's and head. They have head as a weapon but not for Snows' entrance? AS In game superstar The Hurricane would say, WASUPWITDAT?

There is also quite a good create a taunt in this game. You get some bases to start with, then you can customise everything about that base so you can create some great looking taunts for the superstars. For example, you can create The Undertaker's kneeling prayer taunt and assign it to him and he will be able to use it in the matches.

The season mode also features the Draft lottery. At the start, you can either select Vince McMahon or Ric Flair. You can then select 10 superstars each for your brand, Raw or Smackdown. Or you can skip it and manually assign everyone. The only non draft person is Stone Cold for contract reasons. If you play as Stone Cold, in the first week, you can pick what brand you go to and it features a nice surprise when you pick.

I would strongly recommend this as a starter to people who have never played a wrestling game before. It is simple to play and easy to master. I feel that this is a vast improvement from Past Wrestling Games and, as the future games proved, they are using this as a standard for the games.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/05