You're An Idiot And Here's Why 10.11.07: Smackdown Video Games
Posted by Rob Halden on 10.11.2007
This week Rob Halden couldn't find anything nasty to say about WWE TV....so he's turned on their video games instead.
There might be more in the non-Idiot part than there is in the Idiot part this week folks. Don't blame me, blame some quality TV this week.
Rob Does Not Hate The Following
No Mercy, Raw and the WWE!
I'm as surprised as you are, reader. After spending three weeks ripping into the WWE for their god-awful Tag Team, Diva and Cruiserweight sections of programming, I've gotta give it up for what went down between Sunday and Monday. Appointing Randy Orton as champion was something I did see coming, but then having Triple H come out and take it from him was a nice touch of irony for long-time viewers. I was worried that the WWE had gotten scared and reverted to old habits by quickly putting the title on Triple H before his new face-character is ready for the belt. But they pulled off a master-stroke in having Orton win the belt back at the end of the evening. And I loved the fact they haven't overlooked Umaga but woven him into the main event story.
Monday night continued with the great booking, keeping the Umaga/HHH feud hot, giving Orton a great big celebration ceremony and then POW! HBK all up in this bizzatch! Good moves WWE, good moves.
All of which is just further proof that the WWE does it's very best when it's on the back-foot. Whether through competition with WCW and ECW or losing its top-line go-to guys, the WWE delivers when it's needed. If only they could just retain that booking mentality for when everything running smoothly.
This Week's Idiot: THQ's Smackdown Games
So earlier this year I got sick and tired of my shitty cinema job and quit. I used to love the job when I was on the shop-floor, but then I got made Assistant Manager and everybody hated me. Mainly because they were a bunch of lazy, work-shy students and I had to shout at them all the time. But still. So knowing full well that I was about to quit my job, and with zero back-up income in place (Go Plan-Rob!) I decided to sell my Xbox 360. I wasn't getting much life out of the thing with the job I had sucking all the free-time and joy from me, and the £200 would come in handy. So I sold it and haven't had one since. And the news of awesome games like Halo 3 and the like have not urged me one bit to go out and buy another Xbox. Then I saw on wwe.com that Smackdown Vs Raw 2008 was out, marched right down to the store with money in hand to shell out on a brand new gaming system for exactly one game.
The fact that Smackdown Vs Raw 2008 isn't out in this country until next month is neither here nor there. The point is that my gaming life revolves around the Smackdown games. Smackdown games and any decent comic book game, for I am Uber-Geek. Yeah, I'll buy GTA IV when it comes out. And yeah, I loved Crackdown like it was actual crack and I'll buy that again. And the new Spiderman game looks freakin sweet. But I won't spend £250 on a new games system just for any one of those games. But I will take that plunge for the latest piece of wrestling action.
The problem is, I completely hated Smackdown Vs Raw 2007. Hated it. Had it for maybe five days and then traded it in for something else. I was so godamn bored of that style of game. A friend of mine claimed that it was my fault because I buy the brand new version of Smackdown every year. Like the games weren't designed to be bought by the same customers every year, but rather, were designed for entirely new customers each and every year. First of all, fuck you Tony. You don't know shit. And you owe me three drinks from last Saturday you cheap fucker. Second of all, that's bullshit. The Smackdown games are not updates or add-ons for an existing game. Every year that they come out, they are brand new games. Which means that every year that game should have enough new features, tweaked features or improved game-play to warrant a brand new purchase.
This has been fucking me off for months now, so much so that I don't even want to play the games anymore. I was up in Stoke with my buddy Pete spending an entire weekend veging out and watching nothing but wrestling DVD's. Pete tried to convince me to play some Smackdown and I flat-out refused…until I realized that Pete has all the old versions of Smackdown. For whatever reason, Pete doesn't trade or sell the old games when the new one comes out, he just keeps them. Going back and playing Shut Your Mouth was a revelation! Sure the graphics aren't as slick and the loading times are long, but the game rocked! The season mode still holds up today with really cool nWo storylines running through it. One of the most enjoyable things about the Shut Your Mouth season mode was having all the Championship to play for during the season. Meaning you can have a great season as a mid-level guy or a Cruiserweight, aiming for the Tag Team Titles, going for the Hardcore or the European Championships, or pulling a Lance Storm and trying to wear as much gold as possible at the same time.
The roster was great as well. I'm a big fan of playing as lesser known, overlooked wrestlers that are my personal favorites. And Shut Your Mouth features the likes of the aforementioned and completely awesome Lance Storm, Shawn Stasiak, Raven, Diamond Dallas Page and Billy Kidman, all from the Invasion time-period. Not to mention the full nWo of Hogan, Hall, Nash and X-Pac.
Then, when I thought it couldn't get any better…we played Here Comes The Pain. Screw the graphics and the loading time. I don't care that they're marginally better than Shut Your Mouth. Here Comes The Pain features the Elimination Chamber for the first time and it blows the pants off of the Hell In A Cell. And the roster! I'm stiffening up just thinking about it! Brock Lesnar, Goldberg, Nash, Scott Steiner and Ultimo Dragon! Read that again people. Ultimo freakin' Dragon! Not to mention Old School Undertaker in the Legends roster.
As the series progressed to Smackdown Vs Raw it gained some plus points but also a lot of negatives. The new combat mode is a big step up and I'll admit the heel/face tactics are awesome, but the "mini-games" within the matches are terrible. Not only terrible but a complete waste of time. The Chop-Battle in the turnbuckle is pure crap, and to this day I don't understand what to do when it comes up. The General Manager mode is a great idea…but executed terribly. The GM mode is slow, boring and lacking in the one area that it needs; you can't pick the winner of a match. Presumably the developers saw the big online market for games like Promotion Wars and Extreme Warfare and wanted to incorporate that…but then had to pussy out at the last minute and not admit that wrestling is pre-planned in case it ruins the illusion for any children playing the game. A fair point, but it completely hamstrings the entire fucking GM Mode. Every time you have a title defense the belt changes hands almost randomly.
The season mode has also become frustrating and annoying. Now the only championships you can aim for are the US or IC respective of your brand, and the World or WWE Championships. That's basically the developers telling you it's pointless playing as someone like Tajiri in season mode. What fun could you possibly have with the Tag Titles or the Cruiserweight Championship?
And the most frustrating and annoying thing about season mode in the new Smackdown Vs Raw series? Despite the fact you are constantly given the option of turning heel…no matter what you do…the game will force you back to being a godamn face! Every chance I get I screw my partner over and side with the bad guys. Every single chance I get. But every single time I do this…all of a sudden it turns out to be someone else's evil plan all along and I'm left taking a four-on-one beat-down designed to make everyone feel sorry for me.
The season mode has a tendency to try and force you to lose. More often than not it will force you into ladder matches or handicap matches at crucial stages of the game where the odds are stacked so high against you it's high unlikely you'll win. And if by some miracle you do win, this will be interrupted by a cut-scene that will override your victory and depict a scene in which you got screwed over and lost.
And can I just say that the fucking ladder matches are nothing more than a game of pure chance. It has nothing to do with skill, it's just random godamn luck as to who wins a ladder match. Man I hate those fucking things.
Since Here Comes The Pain the Smackdown series has gradually been removing the small pleasurable aspects that kept me interested for so long on the older versions. And, of course, this is intentional. The Smackdown games are no longer designed to be the best games possible for which you will truly get your money's worth. The game is simply not designed to keep and hold your interest and entertain you again and again. The games are designed to expire within 12 months time so you'll become bored, frustrated and eager to buy the next game as it rolls out. And every year the new version is only slightly different, with different wrestlers and some of the features changed around.
And…and every year I buy the damn think like a sucker.
You're An Idiot Because – Actually I'm The Idiot As This Has Been Your Marketing Plan All Along Your Greedy Corporate Bastards!
Side-note to that: Albert/A-Train is a freakin' awesome character to play. His move-set is wild.
The upcoming 2008 version boasts an apparently newly redesigned fighting system which I'm looking forward to and an integrated Season and GM mode which I'm hoping will be the answer to my prayers from the last three versions of the game. But the roster looks fucking horrible. As does the actual WWE roster these days.
Still…Terry Funk and Rick Rude on the Legends roster…that's £30 well-spent in my book!
Anyone out there in non-England-land who's played the new version drop me a line and let me know how it plays.
