WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 (DS) Review

Well its that time of the year Ladies and Gentlemen. No, its not the Main Event; its time for yet another WWE Smackdown! Vs. Raw title from THQ. SvR2008 marks the franchises debut on the DS, being developed by AMAZE Entertainment. For their first outing, SvR2008 does a semi-decent job fulfilling a wrestling fans hunger on the go, but ultimately leaves them wanting more.

Upon booting up the game, you are greeted with a menu featuring a generic music riff. It does its job. However, the options in the beginning dont. You can choose from Exhibition, Season and Options. I struggle to wonder why they even bothered with the Options menu, as you can only erase your data, view credits and turn on your Rumble Pak if you have one. Yep, no difficulty levels folks. Exhibition allows you to play either a Single player game, or a Multi-Cart two player game. You can pick from a Singles Normal Match, Hardcore Rules, Iron Man Match, Last Man Standing (Similar to the Wiis KO Match), Submission Match and a 2 of 3 Falls Match. Sadly, the game only supports two wrestlers in the ring, but after physically playing the game, you will see why.

The game dumps literally everything that a wrestling game has ever used in terms of controlling attacks and movement. For one, your ability to move independently around the ring is not there, as the gameplay is based around the touch screen. All moves are context sensitive, limiting you initially to 3 choices, ranging in power from 1 to 3, with 3 being the most hardest to execute. You have to be quick to do the correct actions, as you have to beat the opponent to executing the move. Initially, the gameplay is refreshing to see in a genre that has been recycled for the past 3 or so years with little, if any improvements. Sadly, the game controls wear off, and you eventually end up inventing a fail-safe chain of moves that makes you eligible to hit a finisher, and then win.

A niggling problem with the selection of moves is that an abundance of moves assigned to each of the 21 wrestlers is completely uncharacteristic of their real life counterparts. For some unknown reason, Triple H is able to do Military Presses and Chokeslams, while Kane, for some reason, can hit two variations of the Chokeslam which are virtually the same.

Occasionally, you sometimes come across a new set of moves, as they are only accessible through an obscure chain of moves that you absolutely must do. A prime example is Edges Spear, clocking in at roughly 6-7 moves just to open up the context sensitive trigger to hit the finisher.

Weapon usage in the game is abysmal. Hardcore matches absolutely demand a great range of weapons used throughout the match. SvR2008 on the DS does not. You are only allowed to choose one weapon before the match. On top of that, you may only use it once in the match when the opponent is knocked to the ground, unless you steal your opponents weapon as they go to attack you, which makes the combined total of weapons appearances in a match maxing out at two. The saving grace about the gameplay is that it is not a Race to store your finisher game, like its other counterparts. The game requires you to work over a certain body part and inflict as much damage as possible before being eligible to hit the move. It works well, but as stated before, it eventually turns into a Hit the chain of moves and win game instead.

Upon starting season mode, you find out that you can play up to 3 Seasons at one time, which is rather useful if you have to share the game around with friends or siblings. After playing Season mode for the second time with a different brand Superstar, you realise that it is effectively the exact same story, with a couple of words different. So much for “Three unique storylines to play through”, according to the Instructional Manual.

Season mode effectively consists of a first person perspective hide-and-seek game with a corny wrestling storyline decently wrapping up the matches. The story is generally what you have to expect in a WWE Videogame- Ultimately you’re chasing the World Heavyweight or WWE Championship, while going through the usual bumpy roads, helping out other wrestlers to achieve their goals backstage, before the obligatory twist. Some tasks do feature some innovative use of the touch screen, such as doing graffiti on a wall, even though it is incredibly tacky.

Matches during season do seem to get tiring quickly- No matter what character you choose, chances are you will end up facing the same person a seemingly endless amount of times in a row. Yes, it does match a build-up in the ‘real’ world of wrestling shows, but the fact that there isn’t really a match type that can change the feel of the match just screams repetition. The repetitiveness is increased when the AI constantly resorts to Low Blows countless times in matches during the later stages of the Season, an incredibly frustrating tactic as the animations take forever before you’re able to attack again.

In the backstage elements, wrestlers are lazily placed around the locker room, with the random ones simply mocking you, no matter what status you have when you approach them. The dialogue in these situations is repeated by everybody, which is rather lazy. Speaking of lazy, some of the dialogue in the game is horrendously misspelt, with various spelling errors and general word problems. A prime example was Batista proclaiming “I am going to seek revenge on that Batistan d I’m taking their title”. The Hide-and-seek aspect of the game comes into play when you literally tap certain areas of different rooms to find stopwatches that build up your Training Time, which allows you to play mini-games in the Weights Room that increase your stats and your moves power. It doesnt make sense and quickly tires, despite it being a necessity. During Season mode, you find allies through the storylines that you can have interfere in your matches when the storyline calls for it, and simply find wrestlers to fight when your PDA says so. The PDA allows you to move from room to room, and tells you objectives that you have to complete during your matches and what to do in your storyline.

The game has a lack of Create-a-Wrestler mode, while its absence is more than likely because of the size limitations, although it would have been welcomed to the incredibly thin roster that does its best to cover two out of the 3 brands well. (For the record, ECW is represented by two wrestlers.) Some pre-pubescent children on Youtube obviously dont understand this when they scream at their camera during their gameplay video reviews.

The game pushes the DS to the limits in terms of the graphics- They look rather great for what the DS can push. The textures are unexpectedly high quality on the wrestlers, which mind you, are all the same height. It is certainly an awkward sight to see Rey Mysterio stand eye-to-eye against the Undertaker.

However, the crowd is simply a bunch of 16 pixels per person moving a couple of frames on loop. The 16 arenas are modelled incredibly well, with the Titantrons and entrance music played during the wrestlers entrances, with pyrotechnics also included. Aprons do change, however the rope colour still remains red, which is a slight annoyance when playing on venues such as SmackDown!, which is supposed to have blue ropes. Sound-wise, the game manages to push out decent quality Entrance themes, but during gameplay, there is understandably no commentary, leaving the only sounds being groans, cheers and impact sounds. The tinned sound of the crowd does sometimes get annoying during the matches, forcing this reviewer to run to the fields consisting of an mp3 player.

While Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008 DS is initially a fun, refreshing game, before turning into a repetitive mess. This is one of those games where you will either love the gameplay to pieces, or you will hate it and accidentally let your dog eat the cartridge. There is a sense of accomplishment when you win a match through scribbling canyons into your touch screen, or when you see an obscurely placed move for the first time, but even this wears thin when you complete the game.

AMAZE really need to tweak the gameplay to make it last, and will need to figure out a way to include far more moves to choose from if they do decide to make a sequel.