TNA iMPACT! (PS3, Xbox 360) Preview

Posted by Ramon Aranda on 08.01.2008

E3: Hands-on: The TNA brand finally gets its own wrestling game and we go hands-on to see how the game is shaping up.

One of the games I'm sure our readers had been looking forward to for our E3 coverage is TNA iMPACT! for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. When we visited Midway during the show, we made sure to put aside plenty of time to get a first look and plenty of hands-on time with a pretty fine tuned build of the game.

First of all, I have to mention that the game itself looks amazing graphically. The developers wanted to focus on the realism of the game and the character lead artist made sure to include any scars, blemishes, moles and even pimples if you can believe that to the wrestlers on the roster. Photo reference was used and head scans were used for each wrestlers as opposed to a generic model. In terms of the animation quality, everything was motion captured and it shows as the wrestler movements are very lifelike and the physics are spot on. The game is running at an ultra smooth 60 frames per second, making the responsiveness very quick and we didn't come across any major hiccups during our demo.

There are three fighting styles: high flyers, brawlers and grapplers. Each of the wrestlers has a unique finishing move and submission move. In our demo we also got to jump into an Ultimate X match with Jeff Jarrett, Booker T and Rhino. They each came out with their entrance music along with pyro. As for the controls, the punch, kick, grapple and action buttons are the face buttons (we were demoing the PS3 version). L1 is the strong modifier meaning it will turn kicks and punches into the strong version. If you press the action button, this will do something depending where you are for instance, climbing the ropes. When you are on the top ropes, if you press L1 and the circle button, you'll jump up onto the cable during the Ultimate X match…you can then move your guy around and kick your opponent if he's nearby. When you're near the X you will enter a mini-game of sorts to build up your meter before you can grab it for the win. The models are contact sensitive so if you hit a particular body part, they will react and take damage there. As you're wrestling, you have a finisher meter. When you do enough damage and you fill it up, you can pull of you finishing move.



After the explanations of the controls, we got down to some good old fashion playtime. Everything moves around so much quicker than what we've seen with other wrestling titles and it all looks more natural. You can also run outside to grab things like steel chairs which will bend everything you introduce it to someone's skull until eventually it's rendered useless then disappears. The commentary comes off very well too so it doesn't sound robotic.

Another point that was explained is that Midway is looking into doing downloadable content with new wrestlers meaning the game's roster can keep expanding. Someone on TNA that didn't make the cut? Well no need to worry as it's possible that they'll end up as a downloadable wrestler though no price point was mentioned up till this point. That's a pretty sweet selling point as fans can bitch and moan about a wrestler that's not in the game and chances are pretty good that they may be able to download them at some point. This is an excellent way to keep the roster up to date.

Sadly, not TNA Knockouts made it into the game this time around and we shouldn't expect them to be downloadable either but they would certainly be included in the next installment.

We'll keep you posted on new wrestler being announced on the roster and our guys in the Wrestling zone will get a chance to look into the story mode of the game at the Hard Justice PPV including new wrestlers and features so stay tuned for their updated impressions after August 10th.

Screenshots
All 45 TNA Impact Video Game Screenshots