In this year’s installment of THQ’s Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010, there was a lot of focus towards creating new and unique characters as well as story lines. There were also changes made to the Royal Rumble format, the Road to Wrestlemania stories, the addition of Rivals, the online community, and the addition of new match types.
Creative Tools
Many updates have been made to the create-a-superstar mode this year. The most notably would have to be the “paint” feature that allows you to design your own logo or tattoo. This new tool allows the user to create any logo they desire (cough cough, the Lvlone logo) and stick it on their superstar’s shirt, trunks, boots, hat… Another major addition to the create-a-superstar mode is the ability to create alternate costumes for your character, as well as the other superstars in the WWE. This allows for more creativity in creating your superstar’s ring attire as well as their street clothes. One problem I have with this year’s create-a-superstar mode is the removal of the announcer names. Last year’s game had about 100 or so names that you could pick that the announcer will say as you enter the arena. This year, however, that number has been limited to about 20, and removed from the list were regular names like John or Kevin. Only nicknames (and pretty bad ones at that) remain.
Once your superstar is created, the Create-a-Finisher also received a facelift. Now you can incorporate diving moves into your finisher. This feature is still very limited in my opinion but at least they are moving in the right direction.
Another new feature this year is utilizing the Highlight Reel to be able to edit and create your own entrance video. This feature is rather bare in the fact that you can only use highlights from one match in your video, but it does allow some creativity in making your own video.
Once your superstar is created, the newest, and most impressive, feature in this year’s SvR is the Create-a-Story mode. Similar to the way the previous year’s General Manager mode worked, this year you can create your own story lines, writing scripts and setting scenes for your created superstars and other superstars in the WWE. While this new mode is exciting, it does take a level of patience to set everything up to make a story line that actually makes any sense, let alone is any good.
Royal Rumble Mini Games
This year’s SvR incorporates mini games into the Royal Rumble match. Now when you knock an opponent into the ropes, you need to perform certain actions (based on your location in the ring) in order to eliminate them. These games are fun at first and add a little bit of an extra challenge, but I quickly grew tired of them and they began to present themselves as a nuisance.
Road to Wrestlemania
There are new superstars and new story lines in this year’s Road to Wrestlemania as well as the first story line involving a created superstar. As in the previous years, the Road to Wrestlemania feature is where most of the unlockables in the game are found. While playing the stories, all of the optional goals result in an unlockable item, ranging from new threads to a new superstar.
New Attribute Building
One thing I am quite fond of is the ability to gain attribute points for your created superstar EVERY TIME you play them in a match. This is a good way to level up multiple superstars as well as make your superstar even stronger without having to do the career mode over and over again. In addition to that, some of the abilities (Dirty Pin, Move Stealing…) are available to put on your character from the beginning, while other abilities have to be unlocked during gameplay.
Rivals
The Rival feature allows you to set who is the enemy or ally of each superstar, as well as how much they like them, or hate them. This feature is a little extra toy to play with to make the story lines you create more entertaining and realistic.
Online Community
The online community can be use multiple ways; you can go online to face other players like in previous years, or you can view and download other players’ creations. Through the online community, you can download a user’s created superstar, their entrance video, and their finisher. In addition, you can upload your highlight reel of a certain superstar directly on to You Tube for millions…. and millions to see.
Overall, I would say that this year’s Smackdown Vs. Raw is a great improvement from their previous titles, but there is still room for improvement. I feel that the foundation is there, now they just need to build off of it. UFC Undisputed raised the bar for THQ in my opinion and I believe that these two titles are going to battle it out for supremacy.
Overall Rating: 8.5
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Never liked Smackdown…..never will.