History of WWF/E Games Part 47
WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2010
Release
2009
Format
Sony Playstation 3
Sony Playstation Portable
Sony Playstation 2
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DS
Microsoft Xbox 360
Time to look at the eleventh game in the series.
Background
Smackdown vs RAW 2010 would once again boast that it featured ECW on its box, and this would actually be the last game to do this. This is because the WWE ditched the ECW brand a few months later.
This would also be the last WWE game to be released for the Nintendo DS. I still find it very odd that there was so few WWE games on the Nintendo DS.
Presentation
The character models here look a little downgraded compared to Smackdown vs RAW 2009, but to be fair to THQ and Yukes, it has been rumoured that the reason for this was intentional, and it was to help with the load times in a new game mode Story Designer. By no means are the character models bad. They still look very good, but not quite as sharp as the previous year in my opinion. One thing that is better though is pretty much how everything else looks. The overall presentation has been kicked up a notch, and as a result the game has more TV style presentation than ever before.
I am sure that you will not be surprised to hear that the commentary has still not improved. I think that this years game was slightly more tolerable than previous instalments, but it was still far from perfect. The wrestler voice overs in the returning Road To Wrestlemania mode were once again done very well, but as soon as a match starts and you hear that god awful commentary, it takes you out of the moment.
One thing that is very impressive in Smackdown vs RAW 2010 is the level of customisation that the game allows you. The create a wrestler mode has been improved, but most importantly we now could swap created wrestlers online. This was a godsend for people like me who are terrible at making created wrestlers.
Game Play
First of all I want to talk about how the game actual plays inside the ring. Smackdown vs RAW 2010 I felt was very ambitious. You have at your disposal an incredible 24 grapple attacks if you take into account the various positions and quick grapples. This in theory should make for some very exciting and interesting matches, but it does not.
Now I know many people who loved this game, and I really appreciate all the moves that Yukes put into the game. However the game when playing exhibition matches feels like it has no soul. I may get some heat for saying this, but its downright boring after a short while. They have gone for a simulation style approach which would be great if wrestling was a real sport, but it is not. Wrestling is all about entertainment and this game for me inside the ring got very boring very quickly. I have heard people say that they have “epic” matches with the CPU, but to me the only way you can do this is if you set everything up and engineer the match that way. Because the AI is certainly not good enough to have these “epic” matches.
The game brought back Road To Wrestlemania as its main single player mode. If you remember last week I was full of praise for this mode. Well it is like Yukes and THQ took there foot off the gas for Smackdown vs RAW 2010. The Road To Wrestlemania’s here are nowhere near as much fun. Edge, Shawn Michaels, Randy Orton, Triple H, John Cena were playable in the Road To Wrestlemania mode. There was also a story for a created wrestler and one for Diva Mickey James. The Mickey James Road To Wrestlemania was about as much fun as having a tooth ache. The Triple H and John Cena ones were the stand out ones, while the rest were average at best.
A few new game modes were included, and the best for me was the Championship Scramble match, and the biggest new addition was Story Designer. Story Designer lets you create your own WWE shows, where you were pretty much in control of everything. There were loads of animations that you could use to make your own episode of RAW or even a pay-per-view. You could even write out all of the dialogue with text. Some people really got into this mode, and there are YouTube communities dedicated to sharing there created stories.
The Nintendo Wii version was pretty much the same as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions. It had nearly all of the same features, but of course the graphics were not as good. It did allow you to play the game in many ways. Game Cube, Wii Remote and classic controller were all able to be used.
It was third time lucky for the Nintendo DS version. Finally we could control the wrestler and the moves with the dpad and face buttons. This is a very simple wrestling game when it comes to the actual wrestling, but it is by far the best on on the DS. One really cool thing is that there is a collectable card game thing going on. You can earn different cards that will give you some kind of advantage during a match. In all, this is far from a perfect wrestling game, but it is the best the Nintendo DS has to offer.
Final Thoughts
Smackdown vs RAW 2010 to me threw up a few warning signs that Yukes and THQ were starting to take the series for granted. While they did add a good amount of stuff. As a single player game this got very old very fast. I know some people spent months playing with the story designer, but as a guy who likes to actually play wrestling matches Smackdown vs RAW 2010 was quite the disappointment. They set the bar so high with the Road To Wrestlemania mode the year before it, that it always going to be tough to top it. I was still shocked at the lazily written, and boring stories they came up with.
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