Working Title 02.06.09: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Smackdown vs. Raw 2010

Posted by Jordan Williams on 02.06.2009

You either hate it or you love it. That seems to be the story of the WWE and moreso it's Smackdown vs. Raw series...but can Daft Punk's mantra help it?

Welcome to the #1 Column to be SO FUCKING HAPPY that the Super Bowl is out of town, WORKING TITLE. Tampa is awesome and all, and I got to serve my community service by cleaning up the parking lot (btw, fuck you you dirty ass Steelers fans) but oh my GOD I'm so happy all the Snowbirds and Football fans are gone because now that means we can stop trying to be nice and hospitable and we can go back to being assholes.

Admit it, everyone who lives in Tampa is either obscenely old and rich...or an asshole.

Oh wait, there's one more thing. If you live in Tampa you are apparently a professional wrestler. Seeing as for some reason Tampa is home (as in they live here, not born here) to more WWE wrestlers than any other city in the United States. Now that you have finished marking out over that awesome segway I think it's time to discuss what's going on this week.

As you no doubt know for the last month I've been running a series called Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" where I am pretty much talking about how sequels to popular games could be done better by following Daft Punk's catchy song name as a guide. On my first week I tackled Left 4 Dead, then Fable II(III) and last week it was Marvel Ultimate Alliance (which got FAR more feedback than I expected) and this week I decided to throw all caution to the wind and tackle a game that probably deserves it...but more or less I'm just doing it because I know it's a game a lot of this website has a strong opinion on.

Smackdown vs. Raw 2010.

By the way, someone said it would be pronounced Twenty-Ten. Either way, the SvR series is one of those things that the rest of the gaming world overlooks, but on this special corner of the internet known as the IWC it's the annual whipping boy in digital form. There seems not to be much of a middle ground with SvR. You either think it's one of the worst wrestling games ever made, or you think it's a pretty decent game. Note that everyone agrees on one thing; Smackdown vs. RAW is not perfect, or even above average. It has it's flaws which range from infuriating to just minor shit that only the smarks will bitch and moan about. But we might be able to fix it...at the very least we might be able to make it a fuckload better.

But in the sake of having at least ONE bad wrestling joke in this column...I got FOUR WORDS FOR YA...


Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: Smackdown vs. Raw 2010

You know what? I'm not even going to say something witty. I'll just copy and paste this here AGAIN

Harder: This is going to talk about how the came could be more challenging, and if the game was already challenging enough, how they could make it even MORE challenging to the hardcore players out there. Less health? More damage to the player? It'll be covered here.

Better: Pretty much how it sounds. What are those flaws that could've been left out of the original and made BETTER in the sequel? Didn't like the fact that you had to find a save point and couldn't save whenever you wanted? What about the annoying button layout? We can fix that.

Faster: Now this one might not make sense, but Faster doesn't actually refer to the speed of the game. This will be referring to how fast the game gets supported as WELL as speed of play. Sure, the game might be slow in some points. But what is worse than a slow game? A game that's slow and it takes even LONGER for decent DLC or patches to come out for it

Stronger: The most important part, how do we make the game just stronger than the previous title? How do the three above factors fit into just making the game better as an overall package, in essence, making the game stronger?

Lucky for both of us that's the last time you'll see it. And just for the sake of the column's topic I'll be dragging out a bad WWE gimmick throughout the whole column. You'll know it when you see it.

Anyway, this is a pretty tall order to I expect to miss things. The following are just things I would like to be fixed or changed, but I have no doubt that you all have something to say about it...so you know where to say it at.

Harder
Now while I might've weaseled out of this one last week, I actually have an idea for it this week. Although SvR has never struck me as a game that's too easy mostly because of the countering system that allows anyone to become a fucking God if they have the right relfexes, I did notice there are some things that the game just slacks off at that could change the whole experience and make it a bit harder and challenging for the player overall. And the best part is that it actually fits!

Make Limb Damage Worth It
So you spend a whole match against HBK working over his leg using single leg crabs and all over 'ring psychology' moves. Of course the meter on the HUD shows that his legs are in red damage and odds are that you'll tap him out the next time you slap a submission on...but is he limping around the ring? Not really. If he gets a special will that superkick still make you swallow your own teeth? Probably. So outside of making someone tap out quicker what was the real use of the limb damage?

This is something that I think was long overdue. We see it time and time again in (most) real matches where a wrestler will work over a certian bodypart all match and then the other will sell that bodypart. Cena might not be able to hit someone with The FU The Attitiude Adjuster (Seriously. What the fuck) because his back has been worked over. HBK's knee locks up while he tunes up the band or maybe Rey couldn't get all of that 619 because he couldn't grip the ropes. And then even in a lesser extent we see wrestlers stopping midmatch to shake off the pain, they might limp around the ring or be overly critical of that bodypart to the point where it effect thier performance.



This should be put into the future versions of the game. Not only does it add more depth to the game itself but it makes submissions as a whole mean much more than a tapout. You can now have a submission move in your moveset not because you want to tap someone out eventually, but you might want to hurt thier legs enough so that they limp around the ring, making them slower to move and run. The body damage could play into moves, someone with a body in red might not be able to do some of those bigger power moves until they recover a bit. Someone who's head is hurt might not respond as well to counters and controls due to being knocked a bit silly. The pros to this are endless and always outweight the cons. Sure, we could have some submission masters who end up picking you apart the whole match to the point where you are just a quivering mass...but who's to say that if you damage THIER body they won't be able to apply thier holds as strong as they should be?

See? It really DOES make sense. And it just makes you wonder why they haven't done this yet.

Did you know? Working Title is posted on Thursdays, Jordan generally thinks of the idea for his columns and writes them Wednesday night.

Better
If the message boards for this game mean anything, it means that this game can do a LOT better than it is right now. Of course trying to picka few things to single out out of all of 'bad' is kind of hard. These were the thing that were most important to me that could be made for the better, if you have any to add feel free.

Context Sensitive Counters

Personally, I don't have a real problem with the countering system at SvR. It rewards those who are quick on the draw like it should, but it also gives you a bit of challenge and a sense of 'hit or miss' quality that trying to counter a big move should do. The main problem I have with it is that the same old animations are stale, and then on top of that not every move can be countered. A way to make this better could be to make counters context sensitive.

Say an opponent has you set up for a DDT and you are close to a turnbuckle. Instead of the old "punch in the ribs, slip out, then re-grapple" counter maybe you could decide to rush the opponent into the turnbuckle and then take control. Maybe if you hit a different button and if you were strong enough you could just lift the opponent into some sort of slam. What if you were in the center of the ring? Maybe hitting a button and this direction yeild a different counter than the same button with a another direction.


This has nothing to do with countering, but I just find this picture hilarious.

This would vary the animations for the counters and also allow you to pick which one fits better and would better your position in the match. Obviously if you are a lighter/crusierweight wrestler the last thing you would want to do with someone like say...Mike Knox would be to counter a move by just grappling them again, which would lend to you getting no doubt tossed around like a ragdoll. Instead you have the choice of what type of counter you want to do, do you just want to flip out of the move in a fancy way to get in position to land a strike or do you want to escape completely to put some space between the both of you. The choice is yours.

Hell, it dosen't even have to stop at simple moves. How many times have you see someone get caught in midair off of the turnbuckle? Tons.

How many times have you been able to do this in game? Once. And that's only with a special move. SvR is an arcade game at heart, but the fact that they don't have some of the smaller things that you see every week on TV is a bit maddening, things like unique and realistic counters are one of those things.

Branching Storylines

I'm not even going to assume. I know for a fact that you all played No Mercy. If you haven't you're a fucking liar.

So I'll keep it simple. You know the story structure in No Mercy where it branched depending on what title you chose to go after and there were different variations and 'endings' depending on who you won and lost to?

Yeah. Bring that back.


Did You Know? Working Title's original mascot before The Angry Sun was Birdo? And before Birdo it was a chick licking a PSP?

Faster

WWE has an identity crisis. Sometimes they want to be portrayed as a 'grown up' sport right along side NFL, MLB, and NHL. But othertimes they want to be seen as the alternative in the likes of Action Sports and MMA. The video games have the same effect. While they want to contend with 'real' sports games like Madden with it's roster updates and online leagues. All they really do is end up going toe to toe with fighting games with thier stock characters and cheap online interaction. So let's fix this.

Roster Updates

In the age of DLC, be it free, patches, or ones you actually have to pay for. I think it's time WWE embraced this with TRUE DLC, no, I don't mean paying for stuff that's already on the game disc, I mean real DLC. Maybe every month they release a new CAW Moveset or some new clothes and items. But the important thing is they could use the DLC system to make it's roster accurate. As most of us know WWE is almost a constant revovling door of hirings and firings and this could be reflected in the game for better of for worse. Another staple of SvR is that it seems to always come out with horribly outdated rosters, another thing that could be fixed with a simple patch or DLC.


"You see, Kane. RVD showed up on Raw awhile back and people were asking if it was a one-shot deal and it stayed bumped on the comments for over a year, so the funny part is..."

No, I'm not talking about removing characters altogether, but SvR 09 introduced a pretty nifty "Free Agent" fed, maybe that's something that be used to it's full potential. For anyone who plays PS3 or Xbox 360, you know there is a significant time between the announcement of DLC and the actual application of it (Hello, Left 4 Dead) so instead of having to wait so long for DLC that might be outdated before it comes out. They could just set them on a WWE shedule. Everyone here knows about the "Big Four" Pay Per Views, Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, Summerslam, and Survivor Series. They could schedule DLC to be released on those dates (espesially after WM where they end up firing like 10 people) and that way fans can come to expect thier roster updates and extra stuff around then.

...Again, why haven't they done this sooner?

WWE Universe Online

Man, I hate that term. Either way, it fits for the application that could be done. For the NBA games you have your online dynasty modes. For the NFL games it's the online season...so why don't WWE games have an online federations? Sure, there's some makeshift ones out there already if you look hard enough. But what if WWE actually made it an option to have a legit online federation for actual championship belts and what not? A leaderboard function could be set up, you could set up an online tag team or an online stable to rule everyone around you. WWE always touts it's WWE Universe but right now all it consists of are IWC smarks and the little kids who buy Cena and Jeff Hardy's merch. How about including the gamers into that one, eh?

Or they could...you know...stop using such a lame ass term.

Stronger

Create-A-Lot More

The heart of any modern wrestling game is it's customization modes. First it was simple with Create-A-Wrestler and from there it's just taken off. With the most recent SvR game giving us Create-A-Finisher it looks like it's almost hitting the pinnacle of customization...but it hasn't. There are still things tha can be done like customizing the player AI for when you aren't in the match, all sorts of mannerisims, walks, titan-trons, stable reactions and actions, Finishers from the back and even more.

They could bring back Create-A-PPV and make it better...meaning you litterallly CREATE the PPV. No more making your own WM card or your own NM card. You build the Arena from the ground up. You set up how the stage looks, what color the ropes are, even what design graphic the PPV has. Or perhaps they could add the one damn thing that they SHOULD'VE added in 09...CREATE-A-TRON. Seriously! We had the highlight reel RIGHT THERE. All they needed was an option to make it into your own TitanTron video and the days of having to come out to the WWE Logo or a Diva video would be OVER!

and I'm all for stealing a page out of the old N64 wrestling games and allowing us to actually edit the attire of real wrestlers. Sure, it might take a little more work to make sure everyone in the game is costumizeable and I'm sure there would be our fair share of people playing matches onlin with Umaga in a bikini, but that's just the price you would have to pay for full customization.

That's the main point here, they always add in a little change here and a little change there to what and how you can customize the game without giving you the full monty (no pun intended) where if they could just buckle down and make the game almost fully customizeable then maybe it would have more replay value and not get harped on so much.

Oh, and before you all flood the comment section with it. Fuck Fire Pro Wrestling. Yeah, I know it has it's ZOMG FULL CUSTOMIZATION but fuck off (in the nicest way possible). I just don't like that game. This is about making SvR a better game, not making it FPW.


Did You Know? The most feedback Working Title has ever gotten for a single column is 64 emails in response to Underrated/Overrated in which I named Final Fantasy VII as overrated. This were all emails due to the fact that there was no comment section back then.

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Working Feedback

First off I'd like to say holy shit.

Holy Shit.

Not that I've said that I did not expect to get so much feedback at ALL for the MUA column last week, obviously I can't reply to it all so I'll just pick out select ones to reply to.

Invisible Woman was a ton of fun to play as, until Magneto was put up for download who had similar powers.

And, yeah, Dr. Strange seems kinda must-have for me. Way more than The Punisher who's been so popular that his comic was cancelled several times in recent history.~Chris

Invisible Woman being a ton of fun to play as? Lies. I refuse to beleive you. Also this goes for all the comments about "zomg Dr. Strange was awesome." I admit that at higher levels he was a fucking best (Black Magic, holy shit) but I'm just not a big Dr. Strange fan and while he was on my team for an extended period of time (He's invaluable on Skrull Planet) he was tossed as soon as I got to Shi'Ar.

Also for those that care, my team on consisted of Deadpool, Spider-Woman, Thing, and Iceman. I had Human Torch, Blade, Colossus, The Thing in reserve.

I disagree with you about Storm, once powered up, Storm is one of the best characters in the game. I'm with you on the Hulk and Gambit (even though Moon Knight is pretty much the game's version of Gambit). I also thought Blade and Ghost Rider were useless...except for Ghost Rider's power to bring a hero back from the dead....~Froze

I was going to reply to this but then this came along...

Storm is just a poor mans Thor, why you would play with her when you can use Thor is beyond me. As I said before Thors lighting and wind attacks are deadly, I know Storm has them also, but when you get Asguards Blessing rolling you can pump all your abillitys up by 2 stats for a while, then his Wrath of the Gods gives you energy back. Whats Storm got some generic melee enchancer?~Kinaj

I agree with Kinaj. I still think Storm is useless as a sack of monocolor Rubix cubes. But Thor trumps her in almost every way, I used Thor for a good deal on my New Game+ and I agree that he is downright CRAZY. It got to the point where I didn't like using him anymore because he and Sabertooth are so broken that it just made the game not fun anymore.



Well, that finishes up the column for this week. What am I going to write about next week? No idea. I guess we'll both be surprised.


Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams....and Afro Samurai is actually a pretty decent game.