That Was Then, Is This Too? 11.03.09: SmackDown vs. Raw vs. Day of Reckoning

Welcome to yet another installment of That Was Then, Is This Too?, the column that looks for parallel lines in all the right places. As usual, we have comments:

Jericho has seemingly always been an excellent technical wrestler, while Kenny is not in the same class at the similar point in time. Also, Chris appears to be an excellent booker, as shown by the feuds he has been allowed a hand in booking. Those booking smarts may be what allows Chris to take to each new character and adapt.
It will be interesting to see, in any case.

Posted By: Guest#0744 (Guest) on October 27, 2009 at 01:38 AM

Jericho’s technical ability mostly comes from the fact that he trained with the Harts, and their school has always put emphasis on technical wrestling. As for Jericho’s skills as a booker, I think it would be hasty to declare him a great booker based purely on the storylines he’s been involved with.

GREAT column. I almost wish it was just about Omega, since the Jericho stuff is well-covered ground. But that would ruin the whole premise of the column.

Anyway, my favorite Omega moment was (I think) against Danielson at PWG 100 when he screamed “YOOOOU SON OF A B!” before connecting with a DEVASTATING HEART PUNCH. I totally lost my shit. That whole match is hysterical.

Posted By: The REAL MP (Guest) on October 27, 2009 at 10:47 AM

The fact that Jericho is covered ground is the main reason I kept his section rather short. As for the Omega/Danielson match, I’ve seen it and it is some great comedy wrestling indeed, something that Omega is very good at.

That leads us to banner! 2.0!

As with North American professional wrestling in general, WWE games have dominated the wrestling video game market since the demise of WCW. Although TNA has tried with their Impact game, critical and popular reception have been relatively poor. The Fire Pro series is popular among hardcore fans, but mostly in Japan. WWE video games, and specifically the SmackDown series, which has been around for over nine years now, is the only

Since 2000, pretty much all WWE video games for home consoles have been produced by the Japanese company Yuke’s and published by THQ. While they were initially exclusive to the Playstation 1 and 2, they have been appearing on the Xbox 360 since SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 and the Wii since SvR 2008. The franchise has been using the same engine since SvR 2006.

The game’s most recent iteration has hit the shelves a little over a week ago, and while I haven’t bought it yet I have been able to play around with it quite a bit over the weekend. The game’s main improvement over last year’s edition is the expanded creation modes. Besides the usual create-a-wrestler mode, which has also received a major overhaul, and the create-a-finisher mode that has been introduced in last year’s edition, there is a whole new creation mode based around booking storylines and shows. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions of SvR 2010 also take full advantage of the console’s networks, allowing players to share their wrestlers and storylines. This is a huge improvement to the game’s replay value.

The gameplay has seen slight improvements, such as new grapple positions and the kickout mechanism from the Legends of Wrestlemania game. There is also a new elimination system for the Royal Rumble match and several new areas for backstage brawls, complete with the usual interactive grapples on various parts of the environment. The championship scramble match, which made its first appearance at the 2008 Unforgiven PPV, has also been added to the game.

I’ve been playing wrestling games since the Wrestlemania arcade game was released for DOS, and played most games released for the Playstation 2 or Gamecube. I haven’t played the WWF No Mercy game that’s generally considered to be the best WWE-based wrestling game ever published, so keep that in mind when I say that the WWE Day of Reckoning games are the best wrestling games I’ve ever played.

That Was Then…

The WWE Day of Reckoning games appeared on the Gamecube in 2004 and 2005, following a handful of mediocre Wrestlemania-based games. Like the Smackdown series of games, they were produced by Yuke’s and published by THQ. While using a different engine, it plays very similar to most wrestling games, with all the usual match types and factors like momentum, stamina and limb damage determining the flow of the match.

The game also features an extensive create-a-wrestler mode with hundreds of options for attire, full facial sculpting and an easy to use paint tool to create custom tattoos and clothing decorations. The games were also the first games to feature extensive customization of wrestling masks, which is especially nice for fans of independent or Mexican wrestling.

But creating a wrestler is only one half of the equation. Creating an exact duplicate of Jun Akiyama is nice, but pretty much pointless without being able to have him throw around people in wrist-clutch exploders and blue thunder drivers. The Day of Reckoning games feature literally hundreds of moves, including dozens of Japanese moves that you’d never see in a WWE ring, and before the Day of Reckoning games have never been seen in a WWE video game. Everything from the Delfin special to the space flying tiger drop to the jig’n’tonic is available, making it possible to create wrestlers that not only look like all your favourite Japanese or independent wrestlers, but also move like them.

A very important detail of the movesets is the ability to decide your wrestler’s counter style. For example, a cruiserweight countering a vertical suplex would land on his feet behind his opponent, while a technical wrestler would turn it into a small package, a submission wrestler would turn it into an armbar and a brawler would simply punch his opponent’s ribs until he let go. This might seem like a minor detail, but it does improve on the realism of your created wrestlers.

Another very nice touch of realism which was added in the second game is that in addition to regular statistics like strength and charisma, there are also statistics for five different move types (striking, grappling, mat technique, aerial attacks and dirty). Each move is assigned to one of these types, and assigned one of five levels, which determines how many points a created wrestler needs in that attack type to be able to perform that move. For example, any wrestler can hit a top rope leg drop or elbow drop, but only the best high flyers will have access to the shooting star press or 450 splash.

The game’s story mode, which can only be played with a created wrestler, takes you from an unnamed developmental territory, which basically acts like the game’s tutorial mode, all the way to either the WWE or world heavyweight championship within the course of the way. Along the way, depending on which brand you picked, you’ll either be recruited into Evolution or Undertaker’s New Ministry, which consists of Undertaker, Charlie Haas, Booker T and Big Show. As the year goes along your created wrestler will capture the brand’s tag team titles and secondary title before eventually being kicked out of the stable because the group’s leader feels threatened. The player will eventually win the Royal Rumble and defeat their former mentor in a fifteen minute iron man match at Wrestlemania XX.

The story mode of the second game follows the first one as if the player has picked the RAW brand (the game unfortunately doens’t allow you to import your created wrestlers from the previous game) and basically revolves around the world heavyweight title, which was declared vacant after a double finish to a match between Triple H and Chris Jericho, being stolen on the night of Wrestlemania. Eventually the player gets framed for the theft and kicked off RAW, where, after a brief run in the tag division with RVD, the player eventually captures the WWE championship at No Way Out. The storyline eventually culminates in the player getting revenge on the wrestlers that framed him (Edge and Randy Orton) before competing in a last man standing match at Wrestlemania against Triple H.

Overall I probably spent more time playing the Day of Reckoning games than I did all other wrestling games combined. The game is the sole reason I am now on my third Gamecube (which fortunately are cheap to get these days). As you might have guessed already, the game’s appeal to me lies mainly in the fact that I can create incredibly accurate digital versions of all my favourite wrestlers (for example, my Delirious CAW only has shorter tassels on his mask). I even have a small notebook with formulas because of the limited amount of slots available for created wrestlers. So, will Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 be the game that finally retires my Gamecube?

…Is This Too?

As I wrote above, the main improvements of SvR 2010 over the 2009 edition are the improved create-a-wrestler mode, the extended create-a-finisher mode and the new WWE Story Designer mode. The basic controls are pretty much unchanged from the older SvR games, and are similar to the Day of Reckoning games. I don’t really care much for graphics, and both games have fairly similar gameplay mechanics and controls. That means that it’s down to the various create modes to win me over.

One of the biggest changes to the create-a-wrestler mode is the fact that, for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 editions of the game, the wrestlers’ attire is now rendered in full 3D in stead of simply replacing the wrestlers’ various skin polygons. This means that the attire not only looks more realistic, but moves more realistically too.

The create-a-finisher mode has been improved too, with more animations for front grapple finishers and the ability to create aerial finishers. Unfortunately the create-a-finisher moves suffers from the fact that the animations more often than not end up looking incredibly weird. The aerial finisher mode looks nicer, but from what I’ve seen it mostly seems to be useful for creating impossible stuff like a double shooting star press. In that aspect, I definitely prefer Day of Reckoning’s policy of simply throwing in hundreds of moves, animating each of them individually.

The WWE Story Designer mode looks much more promising. User generated content has been a proven method of keeping a video game alive for years, and both the Xbox Live and Playstation Network provide an excellent platform for people to share both their created storylines and their created wrestlers (although the fact that you can’t edit downloaded wrestlers does hurt a little).

I’ll probably pick up Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 once the price goes down, and by that time there should be years worth of created content out there for me to play with. Of course the main problem with user created content is that it’s exactly that: user created content. There are hundreds of mods and user designed levels available for pretty much any shooter out there, no more than a handful are actually worth the effort of downloading them.

In the end, the amount of play time I’ll be putting into this game will boil down entirely to the quality of the game’s various creation modes, and that’s exactly what Yuke’s has been looking to improve in Smackdown vs. Raw 2010. Unfortunately the weekend I’ve had to play the game didn’t really give me enough time to truly explore these new creation modes, but it all definitely looks very promising.