"If you can get past the glitchs its a decent first outing.."

First off let me start by saying the glitches in this game are going to drive impatient people crazy and those who have to have everything perfect. If you can get around the glitches then its a decent game. I'm going to do my review a little different then others, I do man the way of the GOOD the BAD and the UGLY.

GOOD
First off I have to say graphics are real nice but I wouldn't say they are super awesome. I thought the character models were done right well. I also enjoyed the presentation. This game has great sound and the music is right on in the game. I actually enjoyed the control scheme once I got use to it. I also thought the slow pace was a plus. You may not find it as enjoyable if your into the Smackdown arcade style of play. Also its worth mentioning that I enjoyed playing the Royal Rumble. I saved the best for last and thats Story Mode and even though I haven't been all the way through so far I can't wait to see what happens next. It blows SVR out the water with its voice overs and the plot is good and solid or as good as I've ever seen. You kind of get that feeling your watching the actual show during the cutscenes. Other than that you can have your own customized tracks which is another cool addition.

BAD
First of I'm going to start with the weak fireworks and pyros. They look good for the most part but they really are hollow. I wasn't impressed with these at all especially after playing RAW 2 and DOR. That brings me to entrances and picking songs when your creating a character. What happened to all the original entrances??? Its terrible you hardly have much of a selection at all. Then you go to songs and you have some random rock tracks but no tracks of real wrestlers or legends or anyone. So I wasn't impressed much by that. Then I wasn't to impressed with CAW either. I really thought after seeing Gamingring make a really good looking Smash(Demolition) that WM21 CAW would be off the hook. I was way wrong. Once you've made certain options you can't go back and change them. Lack of matches is also another bad point. If there is a hardcore match I've yet to see it. When is the last time a game didn't have hardcore matches???

THE UGLY
First of I'm going to start with this profile thing. I started Career/Story Mode and I saw an option to change my attributes which will lead me to my next Ugly in a minute. I went to the attributes screen after three matches and found I had no points. You have to buy them in the shopzone. Worst of all if you don't have a profile running (and you have to make sure you do that right) then you get no cash. Attributes are rather expensive too. I've got one attribute point after I guess around 6 or 7 matches of course three of those I didn't get cash. Then if you want to enhance your characters attributes or go to the shopzone you have to leave Story Mode to do so which I thought was kind of lame. Ladder matches can be nerve racking at times. You have to have the ladder lined up just right and if you jump for the title and your not lined up you fall down in a heap. Computer AI. From what I can gather the computer likes to either A. Irish Whip you, B. Run up on the turnbukle, or C. knock you down and put on 5 submission moves in a row and the feature where you can roll your wrestler really does no good to avoid this. Maybe all this could be tolerable except when the AI decides to climb in and out of the ring. Last but not least GLITCHES GLITCHES GLITCHES. First of all the most noticeable one is this nerve racking slow down. It happens usually at the end of the match during the replay and the more people you have in the ring the worse it is. The bad thing is it locks your game up sometimes and this happend when I was in CAW and I was about finished and lost everything. Word to the wise. If your going to make a CAW save often during it. This happend to me during the move selection. I've also seen a few collision issues here and there and also interaction with objects. Right before I turned the game off for the night I actually had the second ring rope attached to my foot somehow. I'm sure there is more to come. in this category. The other big glitch is of course X-Box live which hopefully will be up soon so I can add that to the review.

FINAL WORDS
Glitches are really going to kill this game for a lot of people and thats sad because it is a decent first outing wrestling game. I would defiantly suggest you rent this first unless you are huge on Story Mode like I am. I'm going to tell the Smackdown lovers of the world that this is probably not going to be for you at all. DOR lovers might want to give this a try though along with people who were hugely dissappointed in the first to X-Box WWE games. I would actually rate this game better than the last 2 Raw's. That of course is just my opinion. Even with the glitches this game walks all over both of them. There is no way I would have gave either RAW game anything close to a 9. I hope SG gets the Live situation straight fast and I hope they have learned from all mistakes made this year. If then can learn from them they can make an even better title next year.

I'm going to give this a 6 for SG's first outing. However that is me overlooking the glitches simply because I can work around them though I have to admit the replay thing is nerve racking at times. For those of you that can't get around glitches I'd give this game a Score of 3 for you guys cause you will not enjoy it. Anybody that loves a great Story Mode though should try this one out. Just be sure to rent before ya buy.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/22/05