WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2008

"The Smackdown series actually gets even worse."

Welcome to the latest edition of the Smackdown vs Raw series of games (an evolution of the original Smackdown series that's been around since the Playstation days) THQ has now the past couple years have a complete hold on the WWE game license console wide. Sadly this has not been for the best.

First let me touch about the good things about the game. For one the game does look decent. Superstars look incredibly like their real life counterparts. CAWs are incredible looking and stand up really well for the most part against the in game superstars. The crowd is mostly all 3D now. The characters sweat in matches. However I must say you'd think with a game that's on such a small scale we would actually see the very pinnacle of graphics in these games and yet as nice as the graphics are they don't stand up to games like Assassins Creed or Gears of War or Bioshock which are much bigger games. Come on THQ floor us for a change.

Caw mode is still the driving good of this game. The layering system, the amount of choices still allows for one of the best character creation systems you can find in a game. You can create anyone from someone you personally know to a superstar not in it to some strange creature creation of your hearts desire. This for me and for a lot of people is the meat and potatoes of this series of games and the only reason I myself continue to buy and play them. (I buy them used though as I'm not giving THQ my money for this faulty series). However each and every year they screw up the CAW mode ever so slightly and this time is no different. Layering ability is far more limited. You can't wear as much things. (I can't wear a face accessory and horns at the same time like you could in the original SvR.) It makes for some frustrating times when trying to recreate old creations from past games that you've made. I'd say due to the large increase in the graphical look of you CAW in general it still might be worth it to upgrade to this game if you play them for their CAW mode otherwise you'd be better off staying with an older game.

Gameplay itself I cannot begin to say how pissed it makes me. I take my creation and I go to play with them and just end up pissed off, frustrated and never wanting to play again. The game has become OVERLY focused on reversing. If you want to pull off any of the fun moves your character has on NPCs and have a fun match with your CAWs you have to play on a lower difficulty, and it's so brain dead easy it's still no fun and against other players it's even worse. Even on the games hardest difficulty the games not really “hard” merely just cheap you spend the whole match being countered and countered and countered getting in nothing but running moves quick grapples which will eventually lead to you winning yet again if it's a normal 1 on 1 type of match up. Animations are still broken that have been for many games and now the selling of moves is more broken than it's ever been. I was testing out a new CAW that I made and so I can try out all his moves I moved the difficulty from Legend (hardest difficulty) all the way down to Easy mode to play around with him and tweak him. I pick a ladder match. I beat on my opponent for a good 15 minutes and he never even gets 1 hit on me. He is beat red in damage and I'm clear on damage. then he actually gets a reversal on me.. 1 reversal in 15 minutes then gets a running strike on me. My character lays on the ground squirming around in agony holding his head (he hit me on the leg) and the NPC climbs the ladder and gets the belt and my character never gets up despite me pressing buttons as fast as I can like the game tells me to do. Seriously it's the most broken system ever put into a wrestling game. This game also has a very unbalanced system of stage damage areas all over the place. These places damage your character far more than they should and are easily abused.

24/7 mode at first glance sounds great. It's an ongoing storyline mode that continues to go on and on till you start a new one. You can take a superstar or caw and put them in there and take them from newb to champion and legend. But this system is incredibly broken as well. You see the exact same storyline mode over and over again. I think I've auditioned for a movie and had Piper “help me” to only betray me like 20 some odd times now and there is no real way to not have this happen. Every single storyline mode also seems to end with you and like 3 other people getting it on is some ridiculously unfair and cheaply broken match like a fatal four way ladder match. So you will go undefeated most likely all the way between PPVs only to get a screw job the moment you get close to winning the storyline. I was named number 1 contender for the championship after a grueling storyline only to randomly get that movie star storyline randomly appear right after where I won EVERY match until the unfair ladder match at the end and despite my best efforts the games horrible selling system and cheap mechanics cost me not only the movie role but once again I lost my #1 contendership without ever even getting the match like I was promised.

And it's not against big stars it's always against the low to mid carders, even with the belt you will spend all your time feuding with losers like Gregory helms, Kenny Dykstra…. It gets old very fast.

Online play is just a horrid broken mess, cheaters, cheapers abusing all the games faults to knowing which moves have broken or near broken reversals to which moves have insanely long selling times. It's just an unpleasant experience overall and has been in every installment with online yet it seems to only ever get worse and not better.


Overall Smackdown vs. Raw 08 is not a good game. It's CAW mode is the only reason to play it and quite frankly that has been done better in the past just those games don't look as pretty. Bottom line THQ keeps crapping out this game every year not fixing anything and usually screwing up something new. Really you'd have more fun picking up an old copy of the original Smackdown vs. Raw for the PS2 or if online isn't something of interest grab a copy of Here Comes the Pain. Hell if you don't care about CAW mode perhaps that new TNA game would likely be a better choice.

This game is worthless as a “wrestling” title and until THQ fixes this horribly broken formula I will not be likely buying another SvR title. For now all I can do is dream of days long past when wrestling games were actually fun to play.


4/10

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/15/08

Game Release: WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2008 (US, 11/13/07)