Working Title 10.09.08: The Skate Effect and The Smackdown Killers

Posted by Jordan Williams on 10.09.2008

What happens when I try to type up one column and it ends up being too short? You get TWO columns. This week we examine The Skate Effect and look at two games that have been dubbed as Smackdown Killers.

Welcome back to the #1 Column to think that there should be a channel that shows nothing but The Big Bang Theory and Chuck all day long, WORKING TITLE. Those shows are seriously two of the best fucking shows on TV. If you deny it that I swear to fucking shit that I will hunt you down and piss in your ear while you sleep.

Swear.

To.

Shit.

Anyway, for those of you who care about what's going on in my personal life. The staph infection that has been kicking my ass for the last few weeks is finally starting to clear up. At one point the hole in my shoulder was about 5 inches wide but now it's starting to heal up. There was a chance it was going to get really bad and become some sort of blood disease but that went away. Fuck yeah.

Last week I half-assed wrote a column about games that are hyped as "Killers" and highlighted two games that many thought to be GTA Killers before they launched. The True Crime series and Saints Row. Sadly neither of these games killed GTA but the latter of the two game so close to doing so that it by proxy ended up making Grand Theft Auto a better game in the long run. That type of effect is what the column is going to be about today.

What happens when a game that's touted as a killer actually comes close to actually killing the game it's intended to kill? What happens when that game actually KILLS the game it's intended to kill? A metamorphosis happens, one way or another the game that was brutally murdered will have to either make substantial changes in order to regain its spot or it might just have to fall into obscure mediocrity. No matter the outcome, however. We all win.

The Skate Effect



There is no way in hell I could sit here and write a whole column in an effect that a game has without talking about the namesake. For those of you that don't know Skate was last year's answer to Tony Hawk Pro Skater. The game was made to be the real skaters skateboarding game as the THPS series had been getting a bit stale and a little bit too arcadey and over the top for most people. Skate was made from the ground up by EA to accommodate for the simulation starved audience and to say it delivered would be a fucking understatement.

Not only did Skate deliver in its own right, but in just ONE try it managed to OBLITERATE Tony Hawk Pro Skater, a game that had a series that had an 8 game head start. That make developers and gamers alike take notice because there was a new king on the block. It's very rare for a game to come out of the gate with a surefire winner and completely blast the competition off of the map, but Skate did that and it showed, another thing it did was coin The Skate Effect. Activision was hurting after the as kicking that Skate bestowed upon it, so it decided to try to go back to the drawing board. For the first time in awhile the Tony Hawk franchise decided to take a break and suddenly retool its entire engine to meet a new standard of fans.

Some might say this was just THPS getting stale and thinking it was time for something new, but those of us that are informed know exactly what was going on. They are trying to make a game that can rival and beat Skate 2. The same thing that GTA had to do when Saints Row came out, but to a larger extent, and ironically it's the same thing Saints Row 2 is doing now that GTA IV is out. Will it all pay off in the long run? Only time will tell but as I have said before no matter what the outcome is, we all win in the end because this spells nothing but GOOD for us gamers.

To The Victor goes The Spoils

If you think about it, no matter what developer or industry ends up on top, we all still make out like bandits because they are hopping through all of these hoops just to make US happy, that means we get all of these increasingly awesome fucking games while they break their neck trying to play a never-ending game of 1-up that will only end when one company is forced to stop making games due to can't hang anymore.

But that would never happen...right? Of course it could. Imagine what would've happened if one of these so-called Killer games actually completely and fully dominated the field so much that it just forced the game right out of existence. Believe it or not it's actually happened a few times. On the surface some might believe that Sonic the Hedgehog went multi-platform due to Sega getting out of the console business and wanting to keep its mascot and biggest money maker alive, but look at Sonic now and then his main rival Mario. Mario's game seem to just keep getting better and better yet Sonic's fame is dwindling to downright embarrassing levels and his games are almost synonymous with failure. To put the icing on the cake Sonic is even appearing MARIO'S games now. I don't want to start any conspiracies but it looks to me like Mario killed Sonic. What if this was to happen with more recent games?

We could see games like Halo, Call of Duty, and Final Fantasy become relics of the past because a good game shot out of the gate like a bat out of hell and managed to take it down in one fell swoop. Do you think that's possible?

The Skate Effect is something that has been proven true, it can strike from anywhere at any moment and it seems like history might repeat itself now that the production of video games has become an even more competitive industry and everyone is vying to get that brand new idea or game style out first before the others.

Until next week, I'm Jordan Williams...and Heroes has FINALLY gotten confusing!























...What? Too short? Damn it. I had a lot more planned to go on about The Skate Effect but try as I might I couldn't stretch it beyond a couple of paragraphs. Don't you hate it when you get a really good idea and it ends up being too short to fill up the space it was intended to fill?

Oh well. Because I still have some left over space here it looks like I'll go ahead and talk about something else. It's no secret that if you are visiting this site you either are, or at some point were a wrestling fan. Odds are you have at least had a passing glance as a wrestling game in the last few years and you might've noticed something. It all looks very...bland. That's because WWE/THQ has had a lock on the wrestling game front in the states for a while. But would you believe that there's actually some Smackdown Killers out there as well? The question is that...did they succeed?

The Smackdown Killers

Sadly, wrestling games are as big of staples as they used to be in the gaming world do the popularity of professional wrestling taking a bit of a nosedive in the past couple of years, but that hasn't stopped companies from trying to release games in order to make some money with some type of cross media promotion deal. But I really shouldn't have to give anyone here some sort of history report on how wrestling works seeing as how a lot of you probably know more about the topic than I do. Either way it's no big secret that after WCW and ECW went under there was only one major wrestling promotion in the US (and some might argue in the world), WWE. Part of the WWE's near-monopoly of the wrestling scene meant that there was really no more competition for them in terms of wrestling shows, wrestling gear and specifically wrestling video games.

The long running Smackdown series has been a staple of the WWE for quite a long time, where there have been other WWE games release between Smackdown 1 and SvR09 they have all had pretty lackluster response or are just viewed simply as cheap knock offs to the original. Due to having no direct competition the series began to fall a little stale and old and fans were beginning to notice, some even calling the current Smackdown vs. Raw series the "Madden" of wrestling games due to its lack of real innovation over the years.

But some developers haven't taken WWE's dominance of the genre lying down, believe it or not one developer has been trying to dethrone Smackdown for quite some time, the only problem is that sometimes when you want to be a Killer, it helps just a LITTLE bit of people actually know you exist...

Fire Pro Wrestling



Ah, Fire Pro Wrestling. The game that many hail to be the TRUE wrestling game in the world. Believe it or not, this game series has actually been around for almost 20 years. Way before any (official) WWE game was made and probably way before a lot of you were even comparing wrestling games to each other. FPW has been a longtime staple in the Japanese market when it comes to video games and with good reason. Wrestling is handled in Japan as more of a sport rather than sports entertainment than it is here, and it reflected in the games it makes.

FPW's main claim to fame is that at its heart it was always about its wrestling roots. When every other wrestling game had made the jump to 3D FPW had stayed with its 2D sprites in order to deliver more of an experience for its gameplay rather than its looks. It was (and still is) one of the most customizes wrestling games in the world. While the CAW feature didn't really take off in America until the N64 era of wrestling games, it's been a stable with FPW for far longer and has always been far deeper. Where the Smackdown series has grown in leaps and bounds in forms of create-a-wrestler, when you compare this side by side to FPW's customization options it looks downright pitiful.

For example in the latest Smackdown vs. RAW game you do have a fair amount of customization to play around with on a visual level. If you try hard enough you can actually create damn near anyone correctly, but for many people that's where CAW ends it. Just making someone that looks like what you imagined. In FPW: R (and a few previous FPW games) you could go far beyond that and actually create a REAL wrestler. You could get the look down and go into the amazingly deep AI editor and actually give them a set AI logic for every single move and situation in their move set. This allows for even the most hardcore of wrestling fans to create their dream wrestler, or even wrestlers that weren't included in the game. Despite the fact the previous FPW games use imitation wrestlers from American promotions, some of them being downright hilarious.

Another point for the FPW series is that its main focus has always been on the more tactical side of wrestling rather than the arcade-styled button mashing. This goes back to it being more of a sport in other countries than entertainment. Where the bulk of most American-styled wrestling games rely on button mashing and (to a lesser extent) button combinations, FPW is all about timing. While this put off some players it has won a lot because it turned each wrestling match into a thinking man's game. It wasn't about who had the cheapest move or the higher stats, it was about who had the better timing and the better strategy going into the match, which is the basis for many wrestling angles and storylines throughout the world.

But even with all of this going for it FPW has never been able to make a real dent in any of the WWE games. Sure, the hardcore fans and the importers have made this game their sacred cow, but over in the America the FPW series is largely unnoticed out side of those two key groups. The sad thing is this is one of those cases where the game actually IS better than the game it's trying to kill, but because of poor promotion, timing, and just and overall lack of interest from the market it really didn't get a chance to do any real damage. WWE and THQ never really saw this game as a threat due to the fact that it stayed in the 2D Era while it moved on, and due to the fact that while in Japan it made a ton of dough, more often than not it was release in America as a budget title that many people didn't know or care about.

Of course, this was before WWE finally got some sort of direct competition. WWE has had a stranglehold on the televised market of Pro Wrestling for years and the video game market was the same way, but it wasn't until another company decided to step up and make itself noticed did we start seeing some real waves. TNA came right out and said it not only through their video games, but also on their own broadcasts.

They want to kill WWE.

TNA Impact



Oooooooo yeah, TNA. Odds are either half you just cringed or the other half just marked out a little bit. Total Nonstop Action is the newest promotion to actively try to go after WWE's stranglehold on the world of American Pro-Wrestling, even to the point of openly and publically calling it out and hiring ex-WWE Superstars to do shoots on them and giving them the pushes they never had. For a long time TNA was seen as an upstart company that might just have to tools to take down WWE in the long run but have a big problem with how they promote their product in comparison to WWE. Even though they started out small, thanks to the Internet their popularity began to grow and that's when the real money started coming in.

DVDs, Action Figures, Merchandise, all of these was fine and dandy, but anyone knows the real money makers these days are those wonderful little video game tie-ins, and it was finally time for TNA to get a piece of that pie. This is where TNA Impact comes in.

TNA Impact is the first game ever from TNA and just like the promotion itself it was sent out there with the hopes of trying to take down Smackdown vs. RAW. The end result, however, wasn't as well as anyone would have expected (the same can be said for the REAL TNA Impact as well...)

The game was ambitious, that much was for sure. In the graphics department it seems to have SvR on the ropes, but it was mostly the gameplay and certain key elements that are VITAL to a wrestling game that they seemed to forget. The gameplay was a bit on the button-mashy side even for a wrestling game and it lacked no true CAW, which nowadays is a MUST for a wrestling game, no matter HOW bad it is.

Another point that many gamers and reviewers thought was a bit off was the actual style of gameplay, where TNA was once regarded as being a tad more technical than WWE with it's talent, that seemed to all melt away with the game as there was such a little emphasis on submissions and mat moves that it pretty much just boiled down to "Who can do this power move first?"

Then there's the story mo--

You know what? Fuck the story mode. I'm not even going to fault Impact for this one; all wrestling game story modes are fucking horrible. WWF (E) No Mercy not included.

The thing about Impact that had to me the most disappointing is that many people wanted this game to do well. I'm not a fan of TNA in the slightest, but I really wanted TNA Impact to do well in sales and in reception because I AM a fan of Smackdown vs. Raw and by proxy if a new game came out and managed to steal away a large chunk of SvR's audience, then maybe THQ would finally be forced to update the game a little bit and make it better than it has ever been.

Thus, bringing The Skate Effect full circle.

Working Feedback



Jordan you promised the burning would go away eventually. Damn dirty hookers anyway.

Genre that needs a killer to make others take notice? First Person Shooters. COD, Medal of Honor, Half Life: No denying to most they are fun games, and sell a bazillion copies. But what the shit is with the constant WWII settings? I understand it is the biggest war in the history of mankind, but come on man, what is left for you to cover? I'm waiting on a FPS to have the staying power of a Half Life, or a Halo, or a COD 4, yet is able to do something completely different and outside the box. Could you imagine if Infinity Ward took on a future combat setting? The things they could do would be incredible. Before anyone jumps on me, I know that some recent shooters such as COD 4 have taken us out of WWII, but if you notice COD: WAW is heading right back there. I want a First person shooter that is as fun as COD4 to play, has an inventive ORIGINAL story, set in a time where the weapons would all be reminiscent of older shooters, but offer a new twist. Maybe your M-16 fires lasers or something. A twist to increase the fun factor... That would be awesome. ~Toddo

I agree that the FPS genre needs a bit of a kick in the ass, but I don't think there's really much else they CAN do. I'm hard pressed to think of a single real life or science fiction facet that hasn't been tackled by the FPS genre outside of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. Fuck, that's a game I'd like to see get a second sequel or something, great fucking game.

Ogre you went up 20 cool points when you praised Big Bang Theory. You still have a ways to go before you catch my points total...but we all know that will never happen.~Drew Robbins

Aww, that's so cute. Widdle Drew thinks he's ahead of me. Kneel before your elders, son.

Blahblahbah DRIVER blahblahblah ~A lot of you.

Why didn't I talk about Driver? I have not once, ever, ever ever, ever ever ever played Driver. I tried it out for a few minutes when it first came out and never got into it and haven't looked back sense. And even then I don't equate Driver as being a GTA Killer since it had a lot more actual DRIVING than a GTA game did and barely any on-foot sort of activity until it's third version. There.

Working Question

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....Fuck. I got nothin'.


OH WAIT. I got one!



Thoughts?


Okay, for real this time...

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams....and SERIOUSLY, Heroes is confusing as fuck now.