New article from IGN
We paid a visit to THQ's Southern California headquarters last week to see the E3 build of the company's star pinup, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008. Guiding us along was the newly promoted Creative Manager Bryan Williams and his boss, the Senior Creative Manager (and familiar face to the IGN faithful) Cory Ledesma.
"This year it's all about playing like your favorite superstar," commented Williams. "Fighting styles and character-specific moves are what we really want to stress and that's a big deal for us. We have new strategies that haven't been in the game before and cool match-specific advantages based on style."
Bryan isn't kidding. When we selected the freshly-announced ECW legend Sandman and put him up against the smirk master Randy Orton, we could see the advantages of being a "Hardcore" wrestler in an ECW Extreme Rules match. Sandman's proficiency with weapons helped us own Orton all over the squared circle, while putting chairs on our opponent's neck or pulling off conchairtos added a little extra oomph.
As wrestling fans might expect, the Extreme Rules match is a heck of a lot of fun. Before a bout, users can select which weapons they want to bring with them as part of their setup menu, but that doesn't mean that they'll just appear randomly. Now when you reach under the ring, you can choose one of your items from an analog-controlled wheel; there's no randomization anymore. Even better is that there are new weapons joining old favorites; namely barbed-wired boards and breakable guitars. Expect nine weapon types in all.
Another new touch this year is the ability to interact with fans on all four sides of the ring. But grabbing signs or taking weapons isn't all you can do with them; they can also grab and interact with championship belts or the superstars themselves -- they can even your wrestler on the back or hold an opponent for you so that you can get in a couple of cheap shots.
Perhaps the more important fix, though, is found with the gameplay itself. Yuke's has made a number of mechanical tweaks for fluid action. The ability to run, for example, has been moved off of the buttons completely and is now performed by holding a shoulder button in conjunction with the left analog stick. Exiting the ring and jumping over the apron have been moved to a single button push as well.
"We wanted first-time players to be able to do what they want without having to learn a number of complicated maneuvers," remarked Ledesma. "In the past, we had something like three different buttons you had to push to dive out of the ring on top of somebody; that's hard for beginners. Now, if you want to jump onto your opponent just hit 'Square'' (or X on 360) and you can."
After playing with the new controls ourselves we can attest that the single-button system keeps the matches fluid and fast-paced. It also helps that the new submission system is analog-based as well. How much pressure you apply and how quickly you pump your arms around someone's neck is now entirely up to you -- as is your defense to it, as escaping a grapple is handled with the analog sticks as well. All in all, it's definitely an improvement over last year's edition.
Other new additions worth mentioning include a revamped finishing system that a gives you the option of storing a finisher for use as a style-specific finisher later on. So if, for example, you have a stored finisher with a brawler, when you activate it you'll throw a number of irreversible strikes -- or if you mount a dude on the mat, you can use UFC-style ground and pound punches and head-butts.
There are a bunch of style-specific moves like those mentioned above for other classes too. Showmen can steal an opponent's taunt at any time to increase his momentum, for instance, and is the only class that can perform turnbuckle taunts for himself. Technical guys can reverse any strong grapple as long as they haven't suffered from any limb-specific damage, while high flyers can use quick little evasive rolls to avoid bigger opponents. The whole system works pretty well and to help keep things even for everyone, THQ has even added the option of throwing strikes, even when you're the one caught in a grapple.
One of our favorite new improvements is the streamlining that's been done to the menus and match selections. Examples include a "Quick Play" option that will take you into a random match type with random wrestlers via the push of a button (similar to what's found in sports games), while the "Choose Manager" and "Choose Title Bout" option has been removed completely. But don't panic about those last two just yet -- the ability to have a manager escort you down the aisle (they come out with you during your entrances now, by the way) or defend a belt is still in there -- now they're just options to choose as part of the match selection process; the days of going into a separate menu for everything are long gone.
Of course, the expected visual enhancements have been made to the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions to boot. Crowds look a lot better thanks to depth of field effects, new lighting effects, better 3D and redone faces. Entrances look great too, with a large helping of them having been redone with new mo-cap and other effects (Cena salutes as he comes down to the ring, Sandman bashes his head in with a beer as he moves through the crowd, etc), and hair looks much more realistic. Mo-cap touches the moves themselves too -- Undertaker has a new tombstone (finally), Orton has a redone RKO, and a number of general moves have benefited from the same treatment (scissor kicks, ref arguments, win poses, etc).
THQ has also confirmed that the last-gen versions of SmackDown will be pretty much identical to the PS3 and Xbox 360 version; but system-specific differences are a possibility according to the team (though not confirmed, they were dodgy on that one). At the very least, PS3 fans can rest easy as both the Xbox and PlayStation SKUs are being developed simultaneously -- unlike last year when the PS3 version was so severely behind eventually leading to its cancellation.
As for the rest of SmackDown, THQ isn't showing us yet. Most of the roster is still being shrouded in secret and the create modes are being held back for another day. We did learn that there will be a new interface in these modes, however, and there are some more announcements expected in the coming months (such as the completely new soundtrack),
How will it all turn out? The world is watching...
